by Kim Barnouin
Between what I had saved up now and what I’d have in a couple of months, that space on Montana was mine.
L.A. Times, bank statements, and a business plan (which Elizabeth Cooper, Esquire, helped me write Thursday night) in hand, I walked into my bank on Friday and met with the same suit who practically laughed in my face the last time I sat in this ugly blue chair across from her.
I just about had the money to lease the little space for six months, but I needed capital for buying everything I’d need for my restaurant. Like tables. Pot and pans. Dishes. Booze. Paint for the walls. At least two waiters. Boring crap like insurance, according to my sister. And my sign. Not sparing any expense there.
“Let me look over everything, and you’ll hear from us within a week, Ms. Cooper,” she said, shaking my hand.
Last time there was no handshake.
Friday afternoon, I walked into Stark 22 with my ingredients and pans, shook hands with the owner, a tall, burly guy named Eric Arley, and shot the shit for a few minutes about the Times article and veganism and the restaurant business. He complimented my baking skills and told me he’d had a Skinny Bitch Bakes muffin just that morning. He already had a top pastry chef, otherwise, he said, he might try to get me to bake for him.
He was smarmy and kept checking me out, but not in a sickening way. Once he led the way into the kitchen and introduced me to his chef, he and his slightly overpowering cologne finally disappeared.
“I get why he’s interested in hiring you,” the chef said, his white jacket already stained even though it was only two thirty. “I could make vegan whatever, but I’d forget not to use real milk and then I’d get in trouble like you did at Fresh.”
“God, does everyone know that story?” I asked, setting out my ingredients. This was a place where there really were dead cow carcasses and bloody axes in the back room. I didn’t think the two worlds mixed.
“Yeah, but everyone knows Rain Welch sabotaged you and Emil. She admitted it to a chef friend of mine that she was dating, but then she cheated on him, and he told a bunch of people what she’d said. It’s been a couple of months, so she obviously figured enough time has gone by to fess up. She was pissed that you got her promotion and thought it meant you were sleeping with Emil.”
“Ew,” I said. “Never in a million years.”
He laughed.
Even if smarmy Eric Arley didn’t want my lasagna and fettuccini and the other dishes I was making for him today, coming here and working my ass off on these five recipes was worth it for that bit of news.
But two hours later, I had a check for two thousand dollars for creating a kick-ass vegan menu for Stark 22.
1:14 a.m. Friday night text from Zach: I miss you.
Me: You piss me off.
Him: Ditto. Will you ever cut me a break?
Me: Nope.
Him: Don’t know about this, Clem. I miss you, but I don’t know.
Me: Ditto.
On Saturday night, to celebrate the Times article, getting Stark 22, and the ten recipes I’d rewritten and tested since Tuesday night, Ty, Seamus, and Sara were taking me out to Georgina’s, one of my favorite restaurants, even if Georgina wouldn’t hire me after I got fired from Fresh. In her defense, she had a great staff already and no need for another head chef or sous chef.
“Hey, look, Clem. Prime already has your menu advertised,” Seamus said, stopping in front of the steakhouse just two doors down from Georgina’s. A blackboard hanging in the window read: ENJOY OUR NEW VEGAN DISHES! MEDITERRANEAN LASAGNA, CAJUN-SPICED JAMBALAYA, AND SWEET POTATO AND SPINACH EMPANADAS. SUPERMODELS WELCOME! “That last line is stupid, but now I’m in the mood for jambalaya. Maybe we should just go here for dinner.”
“I can smell the dead cows from here,” Ty said, stepping back.
I walked over and stared at the blackboard. “What the hell? Not only is Prime not one of the restaurants that asked me to come up with a menu for them, but these three dishes were in that packet of stolen recipes. I even gave them those exact working names.”
Sara pulled open the door. “Let’s go confront the manager or whoever and make them take down the sign and take the dishes off the menu.”
“Wait,” Seamus said. “It’s not like you can prove these are your recipes. Lasagna, jambalaya, and empanadas aren’t exactly uncommon.”
“And they’ll say they saw the Times article, thought a vegan menu was a great idea, and instituted one of their own,” Ty said. “Let’s find out who owns the place first. A hundred bucks says it’s a relative of Rain’s.”
I pulled out my phone and called Zach. “Do you know who owns Prime, the steakhouse on Wilshire?”
“Hello to you, too,” he said.
“Do you know?”
He sighed. “Dan Gloves. I don’t know him personally, though. Why?”
“Because three of my stolen recipes are featured in his window as their new vegan menu. And this is not one of the restaurants that hired me.”
“That’s really weird. Dan is known as being an okay guy. Hold up a second and let me see if he has partners.” He came back on a minute later. “One partner. A guy named Derek Ackerman. He only has a twenty percent stake in the place. I don’t know him at all.”
Derek Ackerman. Why did that name sound familiar?
“Okay, thanks. I’ll sic my sister on him. The lawyer in the family.”
“We should talk, Clem. I hate when we’re not in sync. Tomorrow night?”
I hate when we’re not in sync, too. “Tomorrow night.” We hung up, the name Derek Ackerman echoing in my head. “Why does the name Derek Ackerman sound familiar?” I asked Sara, Ty, and Seamus. Where had I heard that name before?
They all shrugged.
“Wait, yeah,” Sara said. “I feel like I know it, too. The Derek part. Like I heard it somewhere recently.”
“I know. Me, too,” I said. “I can’t remember where, though.”
I took a picture of Prime’s window, making sure I got the name and the blackboard in the shot, then did a Google search for Derek Ackerman. Balding dude in his late thirties, maybe early forties. Kind of Jersey Shore–looking, but with wire-rimmed glasses. There were countless hits, one after another, about some self-published book series he wrote called Invest with Nothing!
Yeah, by stealing people’s stuff.
I typed in “Rain Welch” and “Derek Ackerman” to see if there was a joint hit. Nothing.
“Alexander Orr” and “Derek Ackerman.”
Still nothing.
Who was this asshole?
Between Ty’s hilarious story about the sauté chef at Chill and Sara telling us about a coworker who’d managed to get herself fired on her first day, I finally got my mind off of Prime and the fact that people were eating my Cajun Jambalaya, one of the recipes it would take me days to re-create. We sat at a round table at Georgina’s, which was packed—just the way my restaurant would be. I dug into my vegetable curry, studying what the place was doing right. Good music, not too loud. Good waitstaff, without smug asshole expressions on their faces as though they were too model-actor-singer to explain a dish. Perfect lighting. And excellent food.
“Hey, look, that waitress has Eva’s new haircut,” Sara said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually want something Eva has. Think my hair would do that?”
“You’d have to straighten it every day,” Ty said. “My sister would kill you, too. She said you have the perfect curly hair.”
I glanced over, and yup, the woman had an ear-length pointy bob with blunt bangs, except hers was white-blond instead of Eva’s dark red—
Eva.
Now I knew why the name Derek sounded so familiar.
Eva’s husband’s name was Derek.
And her last name was Ackerman.
“I’m Eva Ackerman. Eva. Just Eva. Not Eve. Not Evie . . . ”
Okay, this had to be a coincidence. Had. To. Be. Eva was a royal bitch, but she was my royal bitch. I would even call her a friend.
“Sara, do you remember what Eva’s husband’s name is?” I asked.
“She just always calls him her husband. Oh wait, I think it’s Darren or Dylan or something like that.”
Yeah. Maybe it was Dylan or Darren. Dylan Ackerman. Darren Ackerman. I really didn’t want it to be Derek Ackerman.
I pulled out my phone and typed into the search bar “Eva Ackerman” and “Derek Ackerman.”
Well, shit.
Wedding announcement in the Modesto Bee five years ago.
Investor Derek Ackerman and sales consultant Eva Brine were married last night at St. Michael’s . . .
There was a bad photo of the two of them, Eva with the same red bob and Ackerman looking even more Jersey Shore than he had in his head shot.
“Turns out Eva’s husband’s name is Derek,” I said, holding up my phone. “Derek Ackerman, to be exact.”
“Eva’s husband owns that restaurant that stole your recipes?” Sara asked, looking confused. “That’s weird.”
“Or not.”
I saw the lightbulb blink on over Sara’s head. She grabbed my phone. “Eva stole your recipes and gave them to her husband to use at Prime? What?”
“And I accused Alexander.” Shit. Shit, shit, shit. My appetite was totally gone. “I’ve got to go see Alexander.”
“Go,” Ty said. “I’ll get your curry boxed up for you.”
“Wait,” Sara said as I got up. “What about Eva?”
“She’s next,” I said. “But first I have to fix things with Alexander.”
Like that would happen so easily.
I doubted Alexander would be home at 8:40 on a Saturday night; he was probably working, but I walked to his house anyway. I wanted to talk to him in person. If he wasn’t home, maybe I’d leave a note in his mailbox saying that I was sorry, that I was wrong, that I’d totally get it if he never spoke to me again, but I really, really wanted him to. I’d write a whole thing about how I jumped to conclusions, like Zach was always accusing me of, and that I should have known Alexander would never do that to me, that he wasn’t capable in the first place.
I walked up the three porch steps and rang the bell. The house was dark. No answer. I dropped down on the second step and stared up at the almost twilight sky. Shit, shit, shit.
It took a lot to shock me. A lot. And Eva Ackerman had pulled it off.
Of all the people to screw me over. Eva.
I thought of the way she’d hugged me by her car at my parents’ house, her way of thanking me for talking to her about her husband when she’d been so upset.
I wish I knew if I could trust him, she’d said. I want to.
You just have to go with your gut, I’d told her. The gut knows everything.
So the gut didn’t know everything, after all. That sucked, too.
I was so relieved that Alexander hadn’t stolen my recipes that I just wanted everything to go back to the way it was before. I hadn’t known how important a friend he’d become until the friendship had gotten squashed.
Fucking Eva.
I waited on the steps for twenty minutes, watching people jog by and walk their dogs, before I realized that if Alexander did come home, Rain might be with him. I was not dealing with her. I got up and started heading down the steps when Alexander turned the corner, his dogs beside him. He stopped when he saw me.
“I owe you a huge apology,” I said. “I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah, you are,” he said coming toward me. He looked as pissed off at me as he did the day I’d confronted him.
Lizzie ran up to me and I rubbed her head. “I screwed up. I know you didn’t take my recipes. I knew it even when I was confronting you, but I was freaked out when I saw you with Rain, and it seemed so wrong to me to see you two together that anything seemed possible, you know?”
“Actually, no. I don’t know. I thought we were better friends than that. But we’re clearly not friends at all.”
And with that, Alexander walked up the steps to his house and shut the door behind him.
Chapter 19
As I walked home from the crap encounter with Alexander, I tried to remember what had been going on with Eva at Sara’s birthday party. She’d been expecting her husband to show up, and he hadn’t. Once, when she’d been in the kitchen, grossly double-dipping tortilla chips into a little cup of salsa, the buzzer had rung, and she’d jumped, almost spilling the salsa on me. She’d rushed to the intercom, and when it turned out to be a coworker of Sara’s, Eva had flung the chip in the sink and stalked off with her phone in hand. I’d taken it as the usual crazy bullshit of Eva’s “they are; they aren’t” status update. She’d probably called her husband and asked where the hell he was and if he was coming to the party like she’d told everyone he was. Between that call and my missing recipes was her motive. To suck up to him? To win him back? To prove her undying love?
I punched her number in my phone. Fuming.
No answer. But it rang a bunch of times before going to voice mail, which meant she was ignoring it. After the beep, I left a message. “Eva, it’s Clementine. I passed Prime tonight, which your husband co-owns, I just found out, and three of my recipes are hanging on a blackboard in the window. I’m doubting this is a coincidence.” Click.
By the time I got home twenty minutes later, she called back.
“Clementine, that’s crazy. I would never. Never.”
“Really. So it’s a coincidence.”
“It absolutely has to be,” she said. “What was on the menu? Veggie burgers? That’s on every menu.”
“Actually, my jambalaya, my empanadas, and my lasagna.”
“Your lasagna? Clem, come on. You think you’re the one chef who ever came up with Mediterranean Lasagna?” She snorted.
There was dead silence for a moment, so she clearly knew she’d outed herself. Lasagna? Yeah. On every menu. Mediterranean Lasagna? No.
“Well, if you’re saying I stole your recipes and gave them to my husband to use at Prime, you’re wrong. Because I didn’t. Yeah, I saw the recipes at the cooking class when you were showing them to the reporter. And yeah, my husband has a stake in Prime. But I’d never betray you like that, Clem. I swear.”
Right.
“So someone else stole my recipes.”
“Or you misplaced them. The thing with Prime is total coincidence. Okay, yeah, I mentioned to Derek that you were creating vegan menus for some restaurants. And yeah, he thought that was a great idea. So he obviously mentioned it to his chef, and his chef made up some dishes. I’m sure once he saw the L.A Times article he wanted to make sure he had something going for the weekend crowd.”
“You’re a liar, Eva,” I said. “I thought we were friends.” And then I hung up on her.
Sara and I were watching Top Chef when the buzzer rang.
Eva.
When I opened the door, she started crying.
“It was all for nothing, too,” she said, blackish-brown mascara streaks running down her face. “He’s back with the skank.”
“Are we supposed to feel bad for you?” Sara asked. “Because I don’t. You, Clem?”
“Not in the slightest.”
“Clem, just let me try to explain, okay?” Eva said.
“What’s to explain? You betrayed me to suck up to your husband. Do I have that right?”
More tears. “I just felt so desperate. He’s been stringing me along for sex. And when I told him about the menus you’re creating for restaurants, it was the first time in a long time that he actually listened to me. He paid attention to me, you know?”
“You know who else paid attention to you, Eva? Clementine,” Sara said. “When you were crying your eyes out over that douche at Clem’s parents’ farm, who went to go to talk to you? Clem. Who calmed you down? Clem. Who gave you good advice? Clem. And you fucked her over. I can’t believe it.”
“I didn’t mean to, I swear,” Eva said, looking from Sara to me. “When I told him about the vegan menus, he thought it was such a g
reat idea and was asking me all kinds of questions about what we covered in class and if I’d saved any of the recipes, which I didn’t. So then he got all pissed at me for not keeping them and what was the point of telling him about the vegan menus if I couldn’t help him out. The main owner of Prime can’t stand him and was trying to buy him out. I thought if I could help him, he’d be so grateful and—” She started crying again.
“Jesus, Eva,” Sara said. “This isn’t any kind of excuse.”
“I’m just trying to explain. No excuse, okay?” She reached into her bag and pulled out a gross wadded-up tissue and dabbed at her nose. “He’s just been so hot and cold and leaving me totally hanging. So when he didn’t come to the party, I just got so upset, and then I saw the pack of recipes in the kitchen and I thought if I gave them to him, he’d be so grateful and would want me back.”
“So now he has my recipes and he’s back with the Pilates chick instead,” I said.
She nodded and blew her nose again.
“You also screwed up Clem’s friendship with someone else,” Sara said. “She accused someone else of taking the recipes.”
Actually, that one’s on me, I thought but didn’t say.
“I’m really sorry, Clementine. Really, really sorry. If I could make it up to you somehow, I would. I feel like such an ass.”
Sara rolled her eyes and handed Eva a clean tissue. “We’re missing who’s gonna get cut from Top Chef, so . . . ”
Eva eyed me. “I am really sorry, Clem.” Then she ran down the stairs.
My sister talked a mile a minute about lawsuits and intellectual property to the point that my brain was going to explode. I’d called her after Eva left and filled her in on everything. Elizabeth said I had to do something to legally document how my recipes had ended up at Prime so that a) the asshole couldn’t sell them as Skinny Bitch recipes in his possession and b) so I wouldn’t get sued for selling my own recipes that he had on his menu.
“Any way you cut it,” Elizabeth said, “Eva will have to be deposed. Will she tell the truth?”