Holly stared at Wes. “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh—”
“Holly.” Wes put his hand on her shoulder and she looked up at him, her face going blank with fear, the words dying on her lips.
Wesley Westcott had spent the past several years being the calmest man you’d ever want by your side in a kitchen crisis. His voice never rose. His cool never faltered. Whether due to shock, or habit, or sheer emotional fortitude, his calm voice betrayed almost no strain as he asked his assistant, quietly, “Did the idiot on the radio just imply that Maddie’s…body has just been discovered?”
“Nutty”
Twelve hours earlier…
There are very few things as invigorating as trying to coordinate the efforts of a dozen whacked out, overly sensitive, testosterone-driven gourmet chefs on the afternoon of a large dinner party. At the moment, six of my prep chefs were ready to kill the other six. And I suspect those other six were ready to kill me. What would life be like without its little challenges?
“Philip,” I chided, “the soup is supposed to be black and white, not brown and white.” We were preparing two soups, a white cheddar cream soup and a black bean soup, which would be simultaneously ladled into the same shallow bowl until the two met in the middle, and garnished with heirloom tomato salsa and sour cream just before it was served. It was to be the perfect start of our evening’s meal as it fit the black & white and “re(a)d” all over headline theme of the Jazz Ball.
“I know that,” Philip Voron said, looking vexed.
“See what you can do to darken the black bean soup, will you?”
“I told you it was supposed to be blacker! Idiot!” Philip Voron spat out at his neighbor.
I moved on.
Across the room, Wes smiled at me and pointed to his watch. We had to keep moving. We were due at the Tager Auditorium, the site of the evening’s party, in a few hours, but I took half a second to appreciate just where I was. On this party day, the day of our final prep for the Woodburn fund-raiser, our industrial-style kitchen could explode the senses of even the most seasoned caterer. The large, white-tiled room with its stainless appliances and high ceiling was currently filled with the sounds of pounding on chopping blocks, punished by a dozen chefs’ aggressive knives, the intoxicating perfume of freshly crushed garlic and just picked basil, the heat of gas flames firing high under enormous bubbling stockpots. I love these sounds and scents and sights.
“Mad,” called out Holly from near the sinks. She was overseeing the women who were rolling out our fresh angel hair pasta. We planned to cook it later when we got to the Tager’s kitchen, quickly so it would remain al dente, right before serving it to our 600 guests. The thing that made it interesting was adding the black ink we’d removed from the sacs of ten dozen cuttlefish, which we’d had flown in from the Mediterranean that morning. Cuttlefish are a sort of squid, and sautéed they taste a lot like soft shell crab. I often lament at the less than adventurous palates of many banquet planners, but this time at least, we’d be out on the inky culinary edge. Our hostesses, the women of the Woodburn Guild, were taking the black and white theme seriously.
“I’ll be right back,” I called to Holly. I had to run out to my car where I’d left a phone number for the ice sculptor who was carving jazz instruments out of black ice.
I ducked through the butler’s pantry, both sides of which were made up of floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted cabinets. There, in the backlit cases, we displayed the hot turquoise and lemon yellow vintage pottery collection we often use, the serving platters and bowls we bring to our more informal events. The pantry led from the kitchen to the office that Wes and I share and then out to the front door by way of Holly’s reception area desk.
I pulled open the front door and started skipping down the flight of stairs that takes you from my hillside entry to the street below. Halfway down I noticed something was wrong. The street below, a quiet cul-de-sac where Whitley Avenue dead ends right up against the retaining wall of the Hollywood Freeway, was covered in trash and papers and the like. What was up with that?
As I began to better process the scene, I became angrier with the mess. Dozens of papers had been dumped in my driveway and beyond, like someone had maliciously emptied a wastepaper basket out their car window as they drove by. I had been out front only ten minutes before with Wesley and Holly, and the street had been quiet and neat and clean. Few people come all the way up this street, anyway, since there is no outlet. So whatever was this paper attack about?
I opened up the back of my old Jeep Grand Wagoneer and pulled out an empty carton marked “Louis Roederer 1995 Brut,” removed the inner cardboard partitions that had cushioned and separated the champagne bottles back when I first bought them for a wedding shower in May, and then with distaste, began picking up trash. As I tossed handfuls of paperwork into the carton, I was thankful the stuff wasn’t filthy. In fact, it was an odd assortment of office-like documents.
Hey, now. Wait a minute. Was that an actual U.S. passport tucked between the sheets of paper I just dumped? I pawed through the sheaves and fished out the navy blue booklet. Amazing. It looked real. I flipped it open and stared at the two-inch photo of a vital, lean man in his early sixties, judging by his iron gray buzz cut and allowing for the standard ten years one must always add to the estimated age of anyone one meets in Hollywood. The name on the passport read Albert Grasso. His date of birth proved I could estimate ages in this town with the best of them. He would be sixty-three next month. His address was on Iris Circle, the next street up the hill.
I leaned against my Jeep, resting the carton on the hood, and filtered through some of the other items I’d just gathered into the box. There was a handful of framable-sized photos that had clearly fallen out of a manila folder marked, “Photos.” I quickly sorted them so they made a neat stack and all faced the same direction, but I could barely finish the task once I caught a glimpse of the glossy side of one of the pictures. It was an 8 × 10 color print, a glamorous studio shot of a seventies icon, autographed “To Albert—singing your praises! With love, Cher.” Cher. I mean, really! Whose trash was this?
Another photo was signed “Jacko,” and showed a very young Michael Jackson. A third featured the cast of the Oscar-winning movie musical “Chicago.” Everyone in the cast had signed it to Albert, offering an assortment of warm thanks and good wishes. Look at that. Richard Gere had mentioned their mutual interest in the Dalai Lama.
I became more enchanted with my trash find by the minute, shuffling through photos of David Bowie, Avril Levigne, and Charro. The last of the photos proved more intriguing still. It was a shot of two people, one famous, one not. The young, dark-haired girl, maybe twenty or so, was smiling into the camera so hard you could see her back teeth. The older man with his arm around her had a face no one could help but recognize. It was President Clinton. They were standing close together in the oval office. The picture had a private inscription, “To Teresa, with thanks.” And then the initials “B. C.”
Wesley’s voice came from far away. I looked up and shaded my eyes against the glare of the sun. He was standing up at the top of the landing by the open front door. “Hey, Mad,” he called down. “What’s up? You get lost out here?”
“You’ve got to see what I found. This stuff was littered all over the place. It seems to belong to a guy on Iris Circle.”
“What is it?”
“Private papers and photos.” I picked one item at random from the carton, a letter, and read it aloud.
“Dear Mr. Grasso,
“Enclosed please find my report on your psychiatric condition. You’ll note the diagnosis code represents a diagnosis of anxiety-stress disorder, for which I’ve been treating you for the past seven years. If you have any questions, or if your insurance carrier requires any further information, please let me know.
“Sincerely,
“Dr. Stan Bradley, M.D.”
“You have some guy’s psychiatric files?”
“Apparently,” I said, unable to resist
paging quickly through a document that was clearly none of my business.
“And you’re standing out in the street reading it?”
I looked back at Wes without a trace of guilt. “Hey, how am I supposed to know what all this stuff is? It was littered all over my property. Littering is a crime. I am simply investigating, aren’t I?”
“Maybe you can put off your CSI inquiry until after we finish with the party tonight?”
I looked up from the thick psychiatrist’s report on the many issues that had been vexing Mr. Grasso and shook my head. Wes was right. I had to get my focus back. “Aye-aye,” I said, snapping to attention. “Do you think I should try to find this guy’s phone number? He’d want his stuff back, I’d imagine.”
“Can we do that tomorrow? We are under the gun here, timetable-wise.”
“You’re right. You’re always right.” I put the last of the papers back into the carton and hauled it up the stairs. “But Wes, how do you think all these personal photos and documents ended up on my lawn?”
Wes relieved me of the box as I reached the top of the steps. “I’m sure you’ll find out all about it. After the Jazz Ball.”
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2003 by Jerrilyn Farmer
Exerpt from Perfect Sax copyright © 2004 by Jerrilyn Farmer
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-01399-6
First Avon Books paperback printing: January 2004
First William Morrow hardcover printing: March 2003
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Acknowledgments
Praise
Also by Jerrilyn Farmer
Excerpt from Perfect Sax
Copyright
About the Publisher
Mumbo Gumbo Page 29