by Leslie Karst
“Though I do have to say the two are similar,” I continued. “Very similar, in fact.” I dipped my spoon into the sauce and took another taste. “This one has more chili, I’d say, and more soy sauce. So it’s saltier and has more of a kick, but it lacks the complexity of Jackie’s recipe. I think hers must have had more ginger and lime than this one.”
I was gazing out toward the bar area, contemplating the ingredients of the two sauces, when a man sitting at one of the barstools turned to speak to his neighbor and his profile caught my attention. Beaked nose and short, curly black hair. Right. It was the guy who worked here who’d spoken at Jackie’s memorial service. The one who’d interceded when her old boss had been about to get into it with Sarah.
As if detecting my stare, he looked in my direction. I returned his gaze with a flirtatious smile, hoping he’d be prompted to come over and chat, and was pleased to see him take the bait. After saying something to his friend, he stood and walked my way.
“Oh, hi,” Eric said, as the man came to stand at our table.
“Hi,” he replied. “I’m Max.” He turned to face me. “I recognized you from the other day, at Jackie’s service, and wanted to come over and apologize on behalf of my employer.”
“Right, you work here.”
“Uh-huh. I manage the front of the house, though I’m not actually working tonight. I just came in with a friend for a drink. But when I saw you sitting here, it took me a minute to remember where I recognized you from.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said, even though I’d recognized him right off the bat.
“Anyway, once I remembered where I’d seen you, I realized I should apologize for Al. He can be a bit of a …”
“Jerk?” I offered.
“I was about to say hothead, but jerk certainly describes how he was on Saturday. He’s actually a good guy in general, but his behavior was way out of line.”
“Well, I appreciate the apology and will tell Evelyn. You know, Jackie’s daughter.”
He nodded, indicating he knew who she was.
“And Sarah and Maya, if I see them again. Sarah’s the one Al confronted. But it would be a better apology if he made it, don’t you think?”
“It would. But he’s not working tonight, so all you get is me.” His quick smile revealed several misaligned teeth in his lower jaw.
Max continued to hover as I sipped from my beer. “What was that all about, anyway?” I asked. “Al seemed pretty pissed off about Jackie’s pop-up.” Even though I was fairly sure I knew exactly what he’d been upset about, I was curious what Max would say.
He shifted his weight and scratched his nose, then looked over his shoulder. “Okay,” he said, “I guess I owe you that, anyway. And you’re a chef, so you’d understand.”
So he knew who I was. Had he been into Gauguin? “I wouldn’t call myself a chef,” I said. “Javier’s the head of our kitchen. I’m more just a line cook there.”
“Well, you’re the owner and have say over what happens at the restaurant, so I’d call that being a chef.” He held my eyes a moment longer than called for, his crooked smile exuding familiarity.
It was obvious the charm he was laying on was purely of the salesman variety, but I didn’t care. What with Eric going on about Gayle and my dad gushing about his new flame, it felt good to have someone flirt with me.
I returned his smile, and it was all I could do not to bat my eyelashes at the man, as our little routine seemed to require. Eric, I noted with some satisfaction, was doing his best to avoid watching us, instead feigning intense interest in the goings-on across the room, where a party of eight was being noisily seated at a long table near the kitchen.
Max leaned in closer to our table. “Anyway, here’s the thing. I think Al was jealous of Jackie. Of her cooking ability and her creativity. He fancies himself a great chef, but he’s really more of a magpie than an innovator—you know, someone who takes ideas from other people and puts them together and then calls the dish new.”
“Isn’t that what all great chefs do?” Eric said, having been sucked back into the conversation. “Riff on what others have done to make it new, their own?”
“Sure. But some do more ripping off than riffing on, if you know what I mean.”
Eric laughed. “Touché,” he said.
Max glanced around again before continuing. “Al and Jackie had collaborated on some of the dishes here that ended up being our best sellers. And I think the reason he went so ballistic when she quit was that it meant she wouldn’t be coming up with recipes for him anymore—they’d be for her new place. And then when The Curry Leaf started getting good reviews, it added fuel to his fire.”
“But that doesn’t explain why he was going on like that at the memorial, though,” I said. “About suing Sarah and Maya if they reopened The Curry Leaf.”
“Yeah, well, he’d started telling people after Jackie quit that she’d taken his recipes to use at her new place. And I think he retold the story so many times that maybe he started to believe it himself.” With a shrug, Max straightened up.
“Some of the dishes do seem kind of similar,” I said, indicating the peanut sauce on our table.
“Yeah, but you can’t own a recipe like that. And Al never had anyone sign a noncompete agreement. Though he’s thinking of starting to now,” he added with a snort. “But I think the hardest part for Jackie was how unsympathetic he was about the guys in the kitchen. Al went around telling everyone after she left that ‘she just couldn’t take the heat,’ that she needed everyone to be super easy on her.”
Max’s body slumped and his face fell along with it. “But maybe he was partly right. If it’s true what people are saying about how she died. That she … took …” He swallowed, then pinched his nose as if the incomplete thought had made him slightly ill.
“Her own life?” I said softly.
He nodded. “That’s what they’re saying around here, anyway. And if that’s true, maybe it was in fact too much, the long hours, the macho atmosphere. I guess I feel like I’m partly to blame since I got her the job here, and then tried to convince her to stay. I know how those guys in our kitchen can be, so I just wish I’d been a little more supportive.” His face had taken on a hangdog look, but then he seemed to shake it off. “Oh, well. If all the wishes were fishes …”
“We’d all be castanets,” Eric finished with a jaunty snap of the fingers.
“I am curious,” I said, after giving Eric a swat on the arm. “Assuming Jackie did use the recipes at her pop-up, why would Al have been so upset about it? You think there’s any way The Curry Leaf could have been affecting business here at Tamarind?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Max said, then waved a hand over the bustling dining room. “But we still seem to be doing pretty well.”
Our waiter arrived with our entrées. “Hey, Max,” he said as he set down the plates. “I didn’t know you all were friends.”
I knew what was really going on in the server’s mind: Should I be more attentive to this table, since they’re pals with the dining room manager?
“We actually just met,” Max said. “But I wouldn’t mind becoming friends.” This last with a furtive grin in my direction. Oh, boy. Had he figured out that Eric and I were not an item, or did he simply not care?
“Well, I’ll leave you to eat,” he said. “But if you ever need a table at the last minute, or any other special service,” he added with a wink, “here’s my business card.” I accepted the proffered card with a polite smile, and Max headed back to the bar. Would he say anything about me to his buddy who’d been waiting there for him? If he did, it wasn’t obvious. Neither of them glanced my way, in any case.
I turned my attention to the waiter, who was giving a detailed description of our dishes—de rigueur these days in upscale restaurants (though we leave our guests to figure it out on their own at Gauguin). My noodles, I learned, had been pan-fried in toasted sesame oil with roast pork, broccolini, and onions, then finished with
a glaze of brown sugar, black beans, oyster sauce, and black pepper.
Might as well just hand me the recipe on a card, I thought. It did smell mighty tasty, though.
Eric’s beef, he recited, palms once more together, was “a traditional Thai curry, simmered in coconut milk and our house-made Panang curry paste, a combination of three different chilis, lemongrass, peanuts, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, shallots, garlic, and cumin.” If I’d been taking notes, I could easily have stolen the recipes myself.
I’d tried the Singapore noodles Jackie had served at The Curry Leaf and was curious to see if her version—like the peanut sauce—was better than what they served here at Tamarind. Taking up the bamboo chopsticks at my place, I slurped down a strand of egg noodle coated in thick, brown sauce.
“How is it?” asked Eric, slicing a chunk of hanger steak and dunking it into his creamy red sauce.
I chewed my noodle slowly, savoring the combination of salt, sweet, and umami. “Good,” I said.
Eric looked up from his curry. “You don’t like it.”
He knew me well. My tone of voice had indeed been less than exuberant. “No, it’s fine. It’s just not quite as good as the noodles at The Curry Leaf, is all.”
“Which goes to show that what that guy said must be right.” Eric jabbed his fork in the direction of the bar, where Max still sat with his friend. “That Jackie was the better cook. But I gotta say, this curry is great.”
I watched as he spooned a dab of green-tomato chutney onto his sauce, then stirred the mixture into the mound of jasmine rice that had come with his beef. Just how angry had Al been about Jackie leaving? I wondered. Even if it hadn’t affected the business here, if he’d known she was the better cook, the fact that she’d opened her own place serving the same dishes must have truly rankled.
But could it have angered him enough to provoke him to do something about it?
Chapter 13
The house was silent when I returned that night. I’d gotten used to coming home to Evelyn hanging out in the living room, watching a movie or listening to music, but tonight the room was empty and dark. Not even Buster was there to greet me as I let myself in through the front door.
I switched on the lights, dropped my bag and keys on the coffee table, and headed down the hallway in search of any signs of life in the building. Evelyn’s door was closed, but I could hear her talking on the phone to someone—a friend, I guessed, based on the laughter on her end.
Buster looked up from where he lay sprawled on the bed, tail thumping, as I came into my room. “Caught you napping, did I?” I plopped down and scratched the coarse hair along his backbone. “Did ya miss me?” The dog responded with a kiss to my cheek, then let his head fall back onto the green-and-white afghan that Nonna had made for me years ago. Within thirty seconds he was asleep, nose and ears twitching as he fell into some sort of doggy dream. “Some company you are,” I said, standing back up.
I wasn’t yet tired, so I headed for the study, sat down at the large oak desk, and opened my laptop. After answering a few emails, I wasted twenty minutes on Facebook, watching baby goats cavort in pajamas, penguins waddle and slip across a sheet of ice, and children dressed as angels screech out a painful rendition of “O Holy Night.”
Before logging off, I decided to check my go-to restaurant review sites to see if anything new had been posted about Gauguin. There were three new reviews—one so-so (“okay, but not as great as all the hype”) and two enthusiastic (“the best duck confit I’ve ever had” and “still dreaming about that asparagus with béarnaise sauce”). Not bad, given I’d checked just three nights earlier. They say you should never read your own reviews, but I seem to lack the willpower to follow such sage advice.
I was about to close the computer when I remembered what Max had said about his boss Al being so upset when The Curry Leaf had started getting good reviews. Curious to see what they’d said, I typed CURRY LEAF SANTA CRUZ REVIEW into the search box. A list of several articles came up, the first from our local weekly entertainment newspaper, dated three months back. I clicked on the link, and a photograph of Jackie, holding up a plate of crispy samosas nestled between ramekins of chutney and peanut sauce, appeared on the screen.
They’d given her four and a half stars out of five, and the praise lavished on the place made me slightly jealous of what she’d managed to accomplish with a tiny, three-night-a-week restaurant. “Specializing in Indian and Southeast Asian street food, this magnificent new addition to the Santa Cruz culinary scene will transport you to the bustling marketplaces of Singapore and Delhi, and have you coming back again and again.” The Curry Leaf was sure to become the “next big thing” downtown, the reviewer predicted, going on to rave about the tender Tandoori chicken, fragrant basmati rice with saffron and butter, and “best I’ve ever tasted” peanut sauce.
Then, near the end of the article, I came to a paragraph that made me stop and read it again:
Jackie Olivieri last worked at Tamarind, where she was a cook for only half a year before branching out on her own to open The Curry Leaf. But she was clearly the star of her old kitchen, as the samosas, noodles, curries and chutneys at her new pop-up are as tasty and innovative as anything I’ve ever had at Tamarind—if not more so. Check out this gem soon, before it’s so crowded you can’t get in the door.
Oh boy, I thought, scrolling back up and staring at the photo of Jackie and her platter of triangular delicacies. I wonder how many stars the reviewer gave Tamarind. I did another search and found she’d awarded them only three and a half stars for her most recent review, just a month after her gush-fest over The Curry Leaf.
Closing my laptop, I stared at the calendar of Hawaiian scenes tacked to the wall above the desk, left over from my Aunt Letta. December featured a black sand beach with baby sea turtles making tracks down to a turquoise-blue sea.
How would I feel, I wondered, if Brian or Kris quit Gauguin only to open a new restaurant in town featuring our recipes for Coq au Vin and Duck à la Lilikoi? And what if, in addition, that new place were to garner better reviews than Gauguin, with a simultaneous snub to Javier and me?
Not good, was the answer. Not good at all.
* * *
When my alarm went off at seven the next morning, it woke me from a dream about being at a dinner party with Julia Child, George Clooney, and Michelle Obama. I was tempted to throw the phone across the room. Now I’d never get to taste that perfectly puffed cheese soufflé George had just set down before me, nor ever get to ask Julia that burning question I’d had—which of course had flown out of my head as soon as I’d come fully awake.
But then I remembered why I’d set the alarm: I had a suspect to track down. Throwing back the covers, I set my feet on the chilly hardwood floor. I generally turned the furnace off at night to save money, but on this particular morning I wished I’d been a little less stingy and had left it set at at least sixty degrees.
I dashed to the dresser to find a pair of wool socks, then changed from my flannel pj’s into a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt topped by my fleece sweatshirt. Ah, much better. Now I could face the day.
Twenty minutes later, I was cruising down West Cliff Drive in the T-Bird, Buster hanging his head out the window as I scouted the walking path for signs of a man with a big black poodle. I’d just passed Woodrow Avenue and was coming up the hill toward Mitchell’s Cove when I spotted a familiar form.
Was that Eric? Jogging? I slowed down to get a better look. It sure looked like him, with that shaggy blond hair flying in the wind. And those black-and-white-checkered sneakers were just like the ones he owned, though they seemed far more appropriate for skateboarding than for running any distance.
He was with a woman. Yep, it was Gayle. She had on one of those Santa Cruz public defender T-shirts with the great slogan A REASONABLE DOUBT AT A REASONABLE PRICE. Hoping they hadn’t spotted me spying on them, I let out the clutch and sped forward.
Eric never jogged. At least as far as I
knew. He’d always made fun of people who jogged, calling them juppies, with their fancy outfits and big-wheeled baby strollers. So the fact that he’d been willing to go running with Gayle this morning spoke volumes—and I’m talking those enormous legal casebook–sized volumes—about his feelings for her.
Trying not to think about Eric and Gayle, I drove on, scanning the people walking along the cliffs. Near the end of the twisty road, my pulse quickened at the sight of a man with a large black dog, but as I passed by I saw that it was in fact a tall, slender woman walking some sort of black setter.
Shoot. I turned the car around at the Natural Bridges lookout, then headed back down West Cliff toward home. Maybe he’s not out walking this morning, or maybe he doesn’t even have the dog anymore.
And then I spotted him. The same lanky build, balding head, and goatee I’d seen at the memorial service. And he was walking an immaculately groomed black Standard Poodle.
I drove a block more, parked around the corner, and hustled Buster out of the car. “C’mon, we’re going for a walk.”
Feigning disinterest in Stan himself, I gazed at his poodle as Buster and I approached. Then, looking up at the human with the dog, I graced Stan with a broad smile.
He smiled back, as I’d known he would. People always love it when you love their dog.
“What a beauty,” I said, as the poodle and Buster touched noses, then walked in a circle as they went for sniffs of each other’s nether ends. “Do you show him?” Oops, I’m not supposed to know the dog’s sex. “Or her?”
“Oh, no. Harry’s just a pampered pet.” He bent to scratch his dog behind the ear, then gave me a second look. “Have we met somewhere before? You look familiar.”
“Uh, I don’t think so,” I lied. “But now that you mention it, you do kind of look familiar. Wait, I think I remember. It was at Jackie Olivieri’s memorial service last weekend. You stopped to pay your respects to Evelyn.”