Fed Up

by JESSICA; SUSAN CONANT CONANT-PARK

  Leo’s promise to be right back suggested that he intended to stay while I gathered Francie’s clothes. Since I couldn’t order him to leave so that I could tear the house apart looking for clues, I had to make the most of my time. Leo’s return would require me to go through the closet. Consequently, I took advantage of his absence to peer under the bed, where I found nothing but a few dust bunnies, and to take a quick look at the night tables, on each of which sat a small lamp. The table on the left-hand side had nothing else. The second night table had, in addition to the lamp, an empty bottle of mineral water, a box of tissues, a clock radio, and a stack of magazines, with a recent issue of the New Yorker on top.

  Afraid of getting caught, I turned to the closet, which was jammed full of women’s clothes. Every one of its many shelves, drawers, hangers, and shoe racks was occupied by some item of clothing. Tall boots and plastic storage containers teetered at the edge of the top shelf; I resolved to keep an eye out for falling objects. I set down my cardboard box, shook out a garbage bag, and started to remove clothes from hangers. Francie had had a large wardrobe in a narrow range of colors and styles. The predominant shades were brown, beige, and gray. The boldest color was dark navy. Many items were conservative pieces from Talbots. I was learning nothing that would contribute to my amateur investigation, but the good news was that many of Francie’s things would work perfectly as interview outfits for the women at the shelter. I folded simple sweaters, blazers, and dresses and collected at least twenty-five pairs of nondescript dress shoes.

  Toward one end of the heavy wooden rod that supported the hanging clothes were several large zippered plastic clothing bags. Unzipping one, I was nearly blinded by color. The outfits in this bag were radically different from everything else I’d seen. Yanking the bag open, I fingered through a slinky pink outfit, an ugly flower-print dress, a series of short skirts, and even a man’s suit. I unzipped the next bag and found additional outfits as outrageous as those I’d just examined. I stood on tiptoe and pulled down a printed storage box that turned out to contain hats. Checking another box, I found high-heeled shoes, brooches, eyeglasses, and scarves, all in styles radically different from the dull, conservative look of the clothing displayed openly in the closet. Yet another box contained wigs: long hair, short hair, curly hair, blonde, brunette—you name it, and Francie had a wig for it. I sat on the floor of the closet surrounded by a mound of bizarre . . . outfits? No, not outfits. Costumes. These had to be costumes. But why? Why had Francie been dressing up as other people?

  “Francie’s little secret.” Leo’s voice made me jump.“I guess I should have warned you,” he said. “The things in the boxes won’t work for the homeless women, will they?” He produced an almost hysterical-sounding laugh. “Or maybe they will! Oh, what the hell does it matter now?” Leo tossed his hands up as he spoke. “Maybe you’ll think it’s funny. What the heck! Francie wrote restaurant reviews. You may have heard of her. The Boston Mystery Diner? She got the idea for the costumes from Ruth Reichl. You know that food critic from the New York Times? Francie made reservations under false names, and she’d go to dinner all gussied up in one of these outfits. Sometimes I’d go with her. I’ve got some, uh, costumes, I guess you’d say, too.” Although I tried to keep my face neutral, my expression may have been what prompted him to add, “She wanted to do fair reviews and not get recognized as a reviewer every time she walked into a restaurant.”

  Francie? Francie, of all people, was the notorious Mystery Diner? Unbelievable! And fair reviews? Those I’d read had been ruthless, unforgiving, and cruelly unfair.

  “Wow,” I said. “I had no idea. For some reason I’d always assumed that the Mystery Diner was a man. Everyone does, I think. I don’t know why. Wow,” I said again.

  “She was the most prominent food critic in Boston. She was very astute and had high standards, so her praise meant a lot to local restaurants.”

  Praise? I wanted to ask. What praise? Well, maybe in reviews I hadn’t seen.

  “Please, Chloe,” Leo continued. “Don’t tell anyone.” He spoke earnestly, even urgently. “Francie was proud of what she did and so proud of not being recognized. She took her job seriously, loved what she did, and there’s no reason to spoil her game now.”

  “Of course. Sure.” I nodded.

  Nothing about Leo’s statements or demeanor even began to hint at any comprehension of how violently his wife was hated in the restaurant community. As far as I could tell, he believed that Francie’s reviews had been admirably honest, and he failed to comprehend the damage and devastation they had inflicted on the hardworking staff of the restaurants she had trashed.

  As quickly as possible, I finished packing the clothes I wanted and left behind the wild costumes. No woman at the shelter needed to set off for a job interview sporting a neon dress and a blonde wig or, heaven forbid, a man’s suit; the shelter did not encourage employment in prostitution, nor did it seek to promote cross-dressing. Before I left, I thumbed through a phone book that Leo dug up, copied down the numbers of a few cleaning services that could take care of the bathroom situation, and left Leo the task of making the calls.

  During the entire drive home, I puzzled over the revelation that Francie had been the Mystery Diner. I’d previously seen Francie as a harmless, innocent victim. In contrast, the Mystery Diner’s reviews I’d read had been downright vicious. Of course, I hadn’t looked at the Mystery Diner’s complete works, so to speak; maybe from time to time she’d lavished praise on a chef. And I was baffled by Leo’s apparent obliviousness to the impact of the reviews and the anger they generated. Or was he playing dumb? And if Leo had murdered his wife, why was he keeping her secret identity a secret? The Mystery Diner’s reviews had provided many chefs and restaurant owners with a potential motive for murder. If the Mystery Diner had torn Josh to pieces, I’d have felt like killing her myself! Why wasn’t Leo pointing the finger of suspicion at the restaurant people whom Francie had enraged? Why wasn’t he deflecting suspicion to people who’d hated her?

  Marlee had a defaced copy of the Mystery Diner’s beastly review of Alloy pinned up in her kitchen. Someone, probably Marlee herself, had stabbed that review with a knife. Digger, too, had had a rotten review. His attitude was more mixed than Marlee’s; he seemed torn between anger at the review and acceptance of it as an inevitable part of the restaurant business. Still, Francie’s reviews had excoriated both Marlee and Digger, both of whom had had the opportunity to add digitalis to the food that Francie had eaten. According to Leo, Francie’s identity as the Mystery Diner was a secret. Oh, really? Just how secret had her secret been? Leo had revealed it to me readily enough. Had he told others during Francie’s lifetime? Had she?

  Robin. Yes, if Robin had had a prior relationship with Leo, he might have told her that Francie was the Mystery Diner, and Robin absolutely could have passed that information on to her good friend, Marlee. What’s more, Robin could have let it slip to Marlee that Leo was going to be the shopper chosen for the filming of Chefly Yours. If so, Marlee would have known ahead of time that she’d be in Francie’s kitchen and would thus have the opportunity to poison food that Francie, the despised reviewer, would eat.

  I peeled into my parking space, left the clothes in the car, flew up the stairs to my condo, rushed to the computer, and searched for Francie’s reviews online. I’d only glimpsed the review posted in Alloy’s kitchen; I hadn’t really read it, in part because the knife sticking out of the center had distracted me. The review I found on the Web was worse than I’d imagined, far worse than merely scathing. As I read it, one damning sentence after another hit my eye:

  What is meant to be a sleek and artful presentation is instead an exercise in pretension . . . Each dish is comprised of unsightly lumps; not only do these lumps not relate to one another in any conceivable way, but each is inedible on its own . . . Despite the chef’s effort at contemporary plate arrangement, I found the micro-green and herb-stem garnishes unattractive; far from whetting my appetite
, they destroyed it. My roasted chicken had what appeared to be a small branch poking out of its thigh. I appreciate fresh herbs as much as the next diner, but there is no need to overwhelm a guest with what amounts to piles of shrubbery . . . The service? Worse than what one would expect at a fast-food joint . . . The trio of beef was enough to convince this reviewer that I would rather stick kabob skewers in my eyes than return to this restaurant.

  Good God! What a horrible review! And, unfortunately for Marlee and Alloy, it was all the more horrible for being accurate—or at least consistent with my own experience. Perhaps the Mystery Diner’s reviews—Francie’s reviews—had, after all, been fair, just as Leo had claimed. Mean and nasty, yes, but on target. Still, it would have been possible to critique Alloy honestly yet tactfully, whereas Francie had clearly prided herself on snarky, savage reviews that titillated readers and sold newspapers.

  But the piece on Alloy might be an aberration. Consequently, I looked up Francie’s review of Digger’s restaurant. After tearing apart the whole notion of small servings and declaring tapas to be a lame excuse to overcharge patrons for the supposed novelty of minuscule plates, the review went on to blast the quality of the food. It was one thing for a chef to hear that the service was poor or that restaurant was unacceptably noisy, but to attack the taste of the food was to hit a chef where it hurt. In contrast to the review of Alloy, this one didn’t ring true. Although I’d never been to the tapas restaurant where Digger worked, all the meals that he had ever cooked for me had been delicious. The Mystery Diner had made some direct assaults on Digger. For example:

  Whoever cooked the smoked sausage with olives and tomatoes should throw in his knives and not even bother returning to culinary school. In the opinion of this reviewer, the dish was a pure insult.

  Ouch! Digger had given me the impression that the review was a harsh critique of the restaurant as a whole and not a personal attack on his skill as a chef. In reality, Francie had slung insult after personal insult at Digger. She’d called him, among other things, an “untalented fool” and an “ordinary hack.” My close reading made me question Digger’s apparently mellow attitude about the review. Maybe Digger had simply been saving face. Still, at La Morra, Digger had repeatedly referred to the Mystery Diner as “he” and had given no indication that he knew the reviewer’s true identity. Plus, Digger had seemed genuinely clueless about gardening.

  Stinging with empathy for chefs who’d been Francie’s victims, I struggled to be unbiased. Digger was Josh’s friend and therefore my friend. Marlee was not. Even when I took my bias into account, it remained true that Marlee was the one who’d shown outward hostility to the Mystery Diner. Hard though I tried, I couldn’t shake the image of that knife in the corkboard.

  NINETEEN

  AFTER reading those beastly reviews, cooking was the last thing I felt like doing. For all I knew, Francie’s spirit might appear in my kitchen and criticize my efforts! But Adrianna and Owen were coming for dinner to go over the wedding ceremony. They were writing their own vows—at least they were supposed to be writing them—and I’d put together some ideas for the rest of the ceremony. All of a sudden, I felt a sense of urgency: unless I finalized my part, I’d find myself standing in front of an expectant crowd and babbling incoherently about the joys of marriage.

  I ran out to the store and returned with everything I needed to make a simple pasta salad. My recipe had two big advantages: it was easy, and it produced one of the few pasta dishes I’d ever made that tasted even better the next day than it did when it had just been cooked. It consisted of fettuccine tossed with shrimp, avocado, red onion, tomatoes, Calamata olives, fresh basil, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese. Francie’s ghost failed to materialize while I cooked, so I felt confident that I hadn’t offended the dead. I set aside the shrimp and the pasta, which would be cooked just before the dish was served, and I mixed the other ingredients.

  When Ade and Owen showed up at seven, one look at Adrianna told me that she was seriously annoyed with her husband-to-be.

  “What’s up? Why are you making that face?” I asked.

  “You won’t believe what Owen has done!” Ade turned to her fiancé. “If you think there’s any chance that we’re using those vows—”

  “She’s really overreacting,” Owen protested before Adrianna could finish. “I just wanted to mix it up a bit. You know, do something untraditional. We don’t want a formal, stuffy wedding ceremony, right? So I came up with something unique!” Owen handed me a folder that contained a sheet of paper with handwritten vows.

  I eyed him suspiciously and braced myself. Owen’s idea of untraditional or unique was most people’s idea of crazy. I dragged a kitchen chair into my small living room and let Ade and Owen take the couch. Ade sat on one side of it with her head tilted and resting on her hand, while Owen sat at the opposite end of the couch with his hands solemnly folded. Despite the separation between the two of them, I could see that Adrianna was muffling a smile.

  I skimmed through Owen’s proposed vows. Oh no! “Seriously?”

  Serious was exactly what my question was not. As if there were any possibility that I’d deliver these lines! Incredibly and ridiculously, Owen had composed wedding vows à la Dr. Seuss:

  Do you take Ade as your bride? Will you stay loyal and filled with pride? Will you love her all your lifEven in times of marital strife? Will you take out the weekly trash, And provide for her some ready cash? Is it your wish that I proclaim, That she shall take your given last name?

  I couldn’t bring myself actually to read the rest. Instead, I ran my protesting eyes down the sheet of paper. After catching sight of an especially hideous rhyme—something about a wedding ring, wanting to sing, and making Owen feel like a king—I gave up. Staring at Owen, I said, “I’m looking at you now, Owen, and you look like a perfectly normal human being, but it turns out that you are not.” Owen, in fact, looked not only normal but even handsomer than usual. Maybe Ade’s pregnancy glow had rubbed off on him. His cheeks had a rosy tint that brightened his fair complexion, and his black hair could’ve been primped by a GQ stylist. In case I’d failed to make my meaning plain on the first try, I said, “You’re an idiot, Owen. I love you, but you’re an idiot.”

  “Hallelujah!” Ade shouted and clapped her hands. “A voice of reason!”

  “Come on, it’s funny. Don’t you think it’s funny?” Owen pleaded.

  “A wedding ceremony is not supposed to be funny,” I instructed. “You don’t have to use the traditional vows, but no way in hell am I reading this.” I crumpled up the paper and flung it at his head.

  “Yeah, and what was that business about giving me cash?” Ade demanded. “You don’t talk about money in a ceremony. Or trash, for that matter.”

  “Okay, okay, I give in! But it’s a happy occasion. I want everyone to have fun.”

  My voice suffused with the authority vested in me by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I said, “This is the first and probably only wedding at which I’m going to officiate, and I’m not going to make a freak out of myself by reciting a bunch of dumb rhymes.” Fortunately, although I hadn’t expected anything quite so preposterous as Owen’s doggerel, I wasn’t caught off guard. Suspecting that both Adrianna and Owen were more attached to the idea of writing their own vows than they’d be to the process of composing them, I’d done my wedding-vow homework and consequently was able to hand them copies of material I’d assembled from Web sites and written myself. “What about these?”

  “I don’t want that business about obeying the groom in there,” Ade said as she reached for the papers.

  Owen’s face brightened. “Maybe we could put in a vow of disobedience. I will never do anything Ade tells me to do!”

  “You better watch it,” Ade warned him. “Your frivolous attitude is making me worry. Did you get your tux yet? I swear, Owen, if you got some garish tuxedo in loud colors, I’ll scream.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” To my ear, Owen sounded all
too serious. “I got the boring black one like you told me.”

  I’d have bet good money that Owen was lying, but Ade apparently believed him, and she didn’t need to be more riled up than than she already was. As she read the vows I’d put together, Ade kept nodding, and even Owen agreed that although my suggestions didn’t rhyme, they would work.

  “Do you trust me to put together the service?” I asked them.

  “Yeah, we do,” Owen rubbed Ade’s back. He looked at her and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Babe, it’s going to be a wonderful day.”

  I said, “Good. I’ll do the whole wedding service, and all you’ll have to do is repeat after me.” Adrianna still looked stressed out, but at least she’d moved close to Owen and was leaning against him. “Relax,” I said. “There’s nothing to worry about. This is all fun stuff going on, okay?”

  I cooked the pasta and the shrimp, and tossed them together with the vegetable mixture. As we ate dinner in the living room, we talked food.

  “How’s the menu coming?” Owen asked.

  “Oh, I almost forgot! The food is going to be out of this world! Even though it’s still August, I know you wanted a fall menu, so Josh is going to put out an amazing spread with that in mind.”

  “I know I’m a pain, but I always wanted to get married in the fall, and since that won’t work out,” she said, patting her belly, “we can at least eat like it’s fall. I’m probably driving Josh crazy.”

  I brushed aside her worries. “Not a big deal. You know how Josh loves a challenge. He’s going to do an extravagant pumpkin stew cooked in a pumpkin, a salad with dried cranberries and maple vinaigrette, tenderloin medallions, a roasted rack of lamb with grape-chili jam and goat cheese sauce. What else? I can’t remember it all right now, but you’ll love it.”