The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  “Turkey burgers? With everything you make, that’s what she wanted? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Yeah, obviously that relationship was doomed. And she was pissed that I didn’t make more money. Believe me, most people who cook aren’t in it for the money. A handful of top chefs have great salaries, but people like me and like Brian? We don’t make a lot. In fact, sometimes sous chefs and line cooks work second jobs to pay the bills. If they have the time to, that is.”

  I can’t say that I was too upset that someone else had cast off this great guy. But what woman in her right mind would break up with someone this wonderful? Murder suspect or not.

  As tempted as I was to jump out of my chair and into Josh’s lap for a more in-depth interview, I figured we’d better wrap up our first date, which wasn’t exactly a date but was better than most actual dates and consequently counted as one. Josh must have had the same feeling I did. He stood up and started loading the dishes in my minidishwasher. “Listen, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come into the restaurant for dinner this week. You could bring a couple of friends if you want.”

  I refrained from fainting with delight and collected myself enough to agree to come in at seven on Friday night. I said I’d bring Adrianna and her boyfriend, Owen. No sense in flaunting Adrianna without Owen on her arm.

  “Excellent. I’ll seat you guys up by the kitchen so I can talk to you while I work,” he promised. “I can’t wait to see you again,” he murmured as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  “I can’t wait to eat again,” I joked, pulling him back in for another full-on kiss.

  TEN

  As much as I didn’t want to see Josh go, I was exhausted from the funeral as well as from my day of food and new love. I puttered around the house for a while and thought about Josh and how cute and sexy and gastronomically gifted he was. I couldn’t believe I’d be at his restaurant on Friday. I left Adrianna a voice message demanding that she and Owen come to dinner with me to check out my new love interest, rate his food, and keep me collected during my first real date with Josh. Even though he’d be working, as far as I was concerned it would still qualify as a date. And a date at Magellan! Probably with dishes even better than his catered funeral food.

  I hated going on dates where the guy took you to some boring restaurant with mediocre food and didn’t notice that anything was wrong. In fact, I can remember what I’ve had to eat on most of the dates I’ve had, and for me, the sharing of food can make or break a relationship. The first date I ever had was in the spring of my sophomore year in high school. It was with George Rosenthal, a junior who worked part-time at a fishmonger (good sign). He took me to the Ground Round (bad sign), where in quintessential teen fashion, I made like I never ate anything and lived exclusively on Diet Coke. George scarfed down two plates of fries and a huge burger and, clearly not impressed with my soda dinner, took me to see Die Hard: With a Vengeance and then promptly drove me home. That was the last time I starved myself on a date. If a guy is put off by the fact that I like to eat, too bad for him.

  The quality of the food on a date doesn’t necessarily have to be great, but we do have to agree about whether a meal is sensational, forgettable, or just plain offensive. The first time my ex-boyfriend Sean made dinner for me at his cramped studio apartment, he somehow managed to burn the spaghetti while it was boiling (something I hadn’t known was possible) and to oversalt the red sauce so horrendously that we both kept puckering our mouths as we tried to eat. Sean got high marks for effort and agreement: he couldn’t cook, but we agreed that the burned and oversalted dinner was awful. We dated for two years.

  After Sean and I broke up, I briefly dated Zach, who was definitely not my type, but I was lonely and taken in by his muscular build, strong jaw, and fully loaded black Jeep Cherokee. I predicted his good looks and cool car would eventually enable me to overlook his deficiencies, among them, that he was not very bright and not particularly interesting. He lived two hours away in Connecticut, and after the novelty of his body had worn off, the distance had meant tiresome drives followed by insufferably long weekends during which I made ineffectual attempts to find something intellectually redeeming about him. When that strategy failed, I decided that if cognitive capabilities weren’t his strength, I’d address the food angle. So far, his dinners had consisted of baked beans and franks, but maybe he just needed some culinary education. After all, it wasn’t his fault if he didn’t know any better; it was up to me to teach him about meals that didn’t come out of plastic wrappers and tin cans.

  One cold Saturday morning in February, I drove to Zach’s place with my car full of fresh produce and two beautiful cod fillets. I slaved in the kitchen finely slicing red peppers, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, and cilantro. I laid the fillets in foil packets, slathered them with the veggies, and doused the fish in white wine and butter pats. Zach looked on in bewilderment, having probably never even seen a piece of fresh fish before. When his virgin kitchen was filled with the heavenly aroma of the bubbling cod purses and audible sizzling was erupting from the oven, Zach curiously went over to the radiator to see if the pipes were hissing again. I explained that the unusual noises were the result of actual food cooking. As proof, I had to crack the oven to show him. I served the fish packets with plain couscous and French bread. Zach diligently tasted his fish and, surprised, pronounced it “not bad.” He then devoured the whole dish in seconds, leaned back in his chair, and reached for the remote to check in on Sports Center, which he’d grudgingly turned off when dinner was ready.

  I was about to give up on Zach but went to see him the following weekend after he’d called me to say that he wanted to make me dinner since I’d done so for him. I made the tiresome trek to his place that Friday night with the hope that some sort of miraculous transformation had occurred following his first fish dinner. Much to my dismay, Zach had gone to the local grocery store and bought some frozen haddock fillets that he bravely slapped onto a dry skillet while I sat frightened in the living room. I mustered all the graciousness I could and bit into the miserable fish, which was accompanied by a side of canned green beans. Zach, who didn’t seem to notice much difference between his fish and mine, once again pronounced the meal “not bad.” The declaration marked the demise of our relationship. I fled after dinner, pausing outside his building to vomit in the privet hedge before speeding back to Brighton.

  Josh was clearly on a whole new culinary level. I went to bed that Saturday night feeling like Christmas was coming.

  On Sunday morning I decided I’d better go retrieve my car from the funeral home in Cambridge, where I’d probably amassed nine hundred dollars in parking tickets. I called Heather, hoping she’d take pity on me and drive me to collect my Saturn.

  “Well, where have you been, my long lost sister? Huh?” Heather said as she picked up the phone.

  “Come get me, and I’ll tell you. You won’t even believe the week I’ve had. Drive me to my car in Cambridge, and you’ll hear all about it,” I said, knowing Heather would do anything for a good story.

  “Fine. I’m heading over to Mom and Dad’s with Walker and Lucy. Let me just get them ready, and I’ll come over. Meet me outside your house.”

  Twenty-five minutes later I was comfortably seated in Heather’s Mazda minivan tickling my adorable niece and nephew. “All right,” Heather demanded, “spill it. What the hell is your car doing in Cambridge?”

  “Hell! Hell!” Walker chirped from the backseat.

  “Dammit, I have to stop swearing in front of the kids. Walker, don’t say that word, please. Mommy shouldn’t have said that. And, Jesus, don’t say it in front of your grandparents.”

  “Jesus! Jesus!” Walker echoed.

  “I’ll just have to tell Mom and Dad he’s an extremely religious child,” Heather sighed. “Okay, Chloe. Go.”

  I caught my cursing sister up on Eric and Josh and the whole murder investigation. With the kids in the car, however, I had to spell out a lot of
the story to avoid having Walker scream “dead body” or “sexy kisser” in front of my parents.

  When we reached my car, I’d finished feeding Heather most of the story. With an exasperated look, she warned, “We’re not done talking about this. I don’t like the idea of you hanging out with this Josh character.” Heather’s bad attitude and the two orange parking tickets on my car couldn’t kill my giddy mood. I started the engine and followed Heather to Newton.

  Heather and I had grown up in a white Spanish-style house on Farlow Road. Both of my parents, Bethany and Jack Carter, were professional landscapers and had created an incredible outdoor utopia with raised garden beds, cobbled pathways, and stucco walls. Vegetables, flowers, shrubs, and berry bushes and vines left little room for a lawn, and each year the few patches of grass that remained became smaller and smaller, overtaken by new plantings. My parents had published a successful series of books for the home gardener and spent much of their time testing out new ideas in their own yard.

  Heather pulled out her key and let us all in the front door. Heather and I had been out of the house for so many years that our bedrooms had been taken over and turned into greenhouses. The outside of my parents’ house was a shrine to taste and style, but the inside was a ghastly display of my mother’s obsession with hideous craft projects.

  “Lord, what has she done now?” Heather wondered aloud as we entered the living room. “Well, Chloe, at least we know where you got your warped decorating sense.”

  A series of wreaths made of yarn and silk flowers adorned the main wall. I stared at a particularly garish wreath constructed entirely of fake sunflowers. “Why couldn’t Mom have discovered a less obtrusive hobby, like jewelry making or scrapbooking? Why has she become obsessed with objects that have to be displayed?”

  “Just be happy she hadn’t discovered wreaths when we lived here. Could you imagine bringing your friends over to see this garbage?”

  “There are my babies!” Mom shrieked as she ran into the room, followed by our father, who was busy rolling his eyes and pointing to the new wall hangings. “I’ve missed my girls so much!” Tanned and fresh looking from their vacation in Acadia National Park, my parents showered us with hugs and kisses and immediately whipped out presents for the two kids.

  In typical sister-ratting-out-sister style, Heather proceeded to announce, “Guess what Chloe’s done? She’s going out with the man suspected of murdering the blind date she had last week!”

  “Jesus!” Walker said.

  “Thank you, Heather,” I said. “And Walker.”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Mom said.

  How many times am I going to have to retell this? Can’t we all just focus on the news that I may have just met my future husband?

  “Heather left out a few details. Josh, the guy I’m going out with, is a very unlikely suspect,” I said.

  After I had yet again given the short version of the date-and-murder debacle, my father asked, “So the food stinks? Bethany, cancel the reservations we made at Essence for next week with the Morrisons.”

  “Definitely,” my mother agreed. “But you’re going to Magellan on Friday?”

  “I know! Can you believe it?” I squealed.

  “Have you all lost it?” Heather said. “This Josh person shouldn’t be at the top of Chloe’s dating list right now. He shouldn’t be on it at all. He could be a murderer!”

  “Oh, please, Heather. You’re so paranoid. Chloe wouldn’t go out with a murderer—she has excellent judgment. Besides, chefs hack up food, not people,” Mom said. “And you’re the one who sent her on this Back Bay Dates date with this poor Eric. You’re the one who started the ball rolling.”

  Heather defended herself. “Are we all supposed to ignore the fact that Chloe has been through a traumatic event? She saw a dead body, for Pete’s sake. All bloody. And now she’s behaving irrationally, eating food cooked by a murder suspect!”

  “She looks fine to me. In fact,” Mom continued, smiling at me, “I think she looks happy and excited about this boy. And he sounds better than that Daniel. I didn’t like the sound of him when I thought he was a platonic friend of yours, Chloe, and then Heather called him your ‘fun buddy.’ Do I have that right? What a horrible expression.”

  Even though Daniel had refused to come to my aid by fooling around with me in front of my building during the Noah crisis, I felt some loyalty to him. Mostly, though, I was furious at Heather for passing on private information about me to our parents.

  I hoped to God that my mother was right about Josh and that Heather was wrong. “Finding Eric was upsetting,” I admitted. “So was his murder. It was awful, but I’m dealing with it. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but I’d just met Eric, so there’s a limit to how devastated I’m going to be, okay? But fortunately for me, Josh is alive and well, and I want to go out with him.”

  “Not alone, I hope,” Heather said. “I don’t think it’s one bit safe for you to be alone with him.”

  I sighed. “Adrianna and Owen are coming with me.” They hadn’t yet accepted the invitation I’d left on Adrianna’s voice mail, but I didn’t say so.

  “Why don’t we all go?” Dad piped in. “I’d love to eat at Magellan.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” Mom said, delighted. “The whole family will go!”

  “No!” I said incredulously. “The whole family will not go. I’m not into sicko family group dates. I will be fine with Ade and Owen.”

  Looking hurt, Dad said, “If that’s what you want. But we expect a full report on your meal. Okay, now come help us taste-test the tomatoes.”

  It was that time of year again. When all my father’s tomato plants had produced their bounty, he whipped up a chart, and as a family, we meticulously rated each variety according to overall appearance, skin thickness, flavor, texture, color—a tomato beauty pageant, if you will, only without the obligatory swimsuit competition.

  Baby Lucy had the good sense to sleep through most of the tomato tasting, which lasted an hour. At the end, Dad’s chart was filled in, with a yellow pear variety deemed this year’s winner. Walker’s face and hands were stained with tomato juice, and Heather sent him off to play in the sprinkler while I told my parents about the exciting world of social work and workplace harassment.

  “Sounds boring,” Dad declared. “On a happier note, I’d like to announce the official end of this season’s Soft Shell Crabfest.” Each year my father set himself the goal of eating one hundred soft shell crabs during crab season, and Fresh Pond Seafood was so thrilled with his attempts that they created a chart for him, hung it on the store’s wall, and x-ed off one box for each of his purchases. They also gave him the last three crabs for free. Yesterday, when he’d bought his hundredth crab of the year, the shop’s owners had framed his crabfest chart and presented it to him.

  Dad proudly raised the trophy above his head, declaring, “I am the crab king!”

  “The fact that you’ve eaten a hundred crabs over the past few months is revolting. You should be embarrassed,” Heather scolded.

  “Heather, leave him alone,” I said. “I think it’s admirable. I love soft shell crabs, but I can only eat a few a season. But Dad has really proven himself.”

  “Yeah, proven himself to have a few loose screws,” Heather said, but went over and hugged Dad.

  “Okay, family,” I said. “I’m goin’ home. I’ve got about a zillion pages of reading for school.”

  “Lock your doors when you get home,” instructed Heather.

  I nodded in mock seriousness, kissed her kids, and headed home—with every intention of locking my doors.

  ELEVEN

  I spent Monday and Tuesday incarcerated in the horrible Boston Organization Against Sexual and Other Harassment in the Workplace. Naomi had left me a note to remind me that she was attending a two-day rally for some worthy cause outside the State House and that I should familiarize myself with the monstrous folder she’d left out for me. I was welcome to come
find her later that afternoon.

  If she thought I was going to sit in this room reading from nine to five, she was nuts. After two hours of trying to digest harassment facts, I decided to start on a social work school assignment I’d been putting off. Our General Practice professor had assigned us the task of detailing our field placement experiences in a journal in which we were free to write about whatever we wanted.

  “Day 1,” I wrote. “Am forced to read lurid stories of workplace harassment while confined to poorly decorated minioffice. Management has opted not to include windows in decor so as to keep staff (me and Naomi) diligently focused on work at hand. Have avoided answering calls all morning since cannot recall exact name of organization. Every time the phone rings I must pretend to be so engrossed in literature that have not even heard incessant ringing. Naomi has encouraged me to take on projects on my own and am considering painting office and creating new filing and storage space. (May not be traditional social work per se, but would contribute to staff morale and psychological well-being). Will order tons of stuff from Hold Everything catalogue and write off for tax deduction. Will discuss with Naomi next week. Am pleased that am not forced to work in community mental health center or hospital psych ward, like some peers, and do not have to deal with those with schizophrenia or other pathological disorders. Although, may go cuckoo in this office come May. Naomi seems to be a hands-off supervisor since is not here today or tomorrow—very nice. Looking forward to stimulating field placement this year.”

  I left at two on Monday. On Tuesday I left at one, having written Naomi a note to say that on the previous day, I’d looked everywhere for her in front of the State House and that although I hadn’t found her, I’d still stood with other women chanting and holding a sign that read No More! I had, in fact, only passed through the crowd on my way to the T and, unable to determine exactly what the group was protesting, had chosen to participate in a protest of my own by objecting to being stuck in a dimly lit office on a sunny September day.