The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

“Of course. Maybe you can help calm Josh down. He’s in a horrible mood tonight,” she informed me, shaking her head.

  Pleased that I was now considered to have influence with her chef, I nodded. “Sure. I’ll try. What happened?”

  She tossed her hands up. In an undertone, she said, “The damn health inspector showed up today for a surprise visit and found some things he didn’t like. It’s not a big deal. Every restaurant usually has a couple of violations, but it’s never happened here. Josh Driscoll keeps a very clean kitchen, and he’s out of his mind about this. He won’t even talk to me about it.”

  “What did they find?” I asked.

  Madeline sighed. “Oh, a few dead mice downstairs, incorrect temperature settings on some of the coolers, a couple of other things. Some expired meat that should have been thrown out.” She looked at my disgusted face. “Yeah, I know. Mice are gross, but the truth is, every restaurant has them now and then. It’s almost impossible not to. It’s just not a big deal. The main problem is, someone must’ve called the health inspector and complained about something. We just had an inspection last month, and everything was fine, so there was no reason for them to come back.”

  “So it’s not that bad, really? Right?”

  “The mice aren’t actually a big deal. But the temperature problems and the expired food are considered ‘critical’ violations. The only reason we’re still open is that the inspector who came by knows Josh and knows that he wouldn’t typically have a kitchen with these kinds of problems. Anyhow, Josh is taking care of everything, but he’s completely pissed off right now. Do you think you could talk to him? I’ve tried to reassure him, but it hasn’t worked.”

  So much for seeing Josh when he was relaxed and happy. I was definitely not going to tell him about the Phil incident or my talk with Veronica.

  Madeline turned to the bartender behind her. “Jim, can you bring Chloe a glass of white, please? She might need it. Oh, and show Josh this. Maybe it’ll help.” Madeline handed me a folded printout from her pocket. “It’s a review from the Boston Globe.” She smiled at me and went off in search of her angry chef.

  I sipped my wine and read the article, a laudatory review of Magellan that emphasized the elegance of many of Josh’s dishes. The reviewer even referred to Josh as “one of Boston’s hot new chefs.” I smiled to myself. This ought to cheer him up.

  A few moments later, Josh sidled up beside me. “Hi, sweetie! What are you doing here?” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

  “I missed you, so I thought I’d just come in and hang around.”

  His chef’s coat was unbuttoned at the top, he was sweaty from cooking, and his hair was messed up. Yum. And he didn’t seem to be in a rotten mood.

  “Excellent. I’m glad you’re here.” Josh rubbed my back and kissed me again, this time on the mouth. Yum, again.

  “I heard you had a rough day,” I offered.

  “Yeah,” Josh answered, his face changing. “I don’t know what the hell happened. I keep a goddamn spotless kitchen. I cannot figure out why the temps were off or why there was old food in the walk-in. I clean it out every day, and I always check the food temperature. Brian’s been cleaning and re-cleaning the kitchen all day trying to do something to make me feel better.”

  “How could this have happened?”

  “I’m not sure. Brian’s been interrogating the other kitchen guys. He thinks one of them is fed up with working twelve-hour days for crappy pay and is trying to get back at us because we’re salaried. It’s a good crew back there, though, so I can’t picture one of them tossing dead mice around. But that’s the least of my problems.”

  “Why? What else?”

  Josh sat down next to me on an empty barstool and took a drink from my glass. “I overheard Maddie talking to Brian.” He cleared his throat and looked at me. “She told him the executive chef job would eventually be his.”

  “What?” I said in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Look around. With a full restaurant like this, she couldn’t possibly be thinking of firing you.”

  “That’s what I thought. She’d pretty much told me this job was mine as long as I wanted.” Although Josh stayed pretty calm, I could tell he was furious. And I couldn’t blame him.

  “Josh, you must’ve misunderstood her. Just wait until tomorrow and talk to Madeline then. There’s no way she’d give Brian your job. Look,” I said holding out the rave review. “She wanted me to show you this.”

  Josh scanned the paper. “Well, it doesn’t seem to matter, does it,” he said sourly.

  “Have you asked Brian about it?”

  “No, but it would explain why he’s in such a good mood. I guess all his flirting paid off. And she wouldn’t have to pay him my salary, so he’d cost her less money. Not that I make that much, but I’m making better money here than I have before. I can’t even be mad at Brian. It’s not his fault. You do what you have to to get ahead. But I’m glad he’s off tomorrow. I don’t want to see him.” Josh shrugged and took another drink of my wine. “Look, I’m beat, and I can’t wait to get out of here, but I have to finish up in the kitchen first. If Brian is going to steal my job, he might as well close up tonight. I want to go downstairs and clean up and recheck the coolers. Can you wait another hour or so?”

  “Of course. Just don’t try to talk to Madeline tonight, okay?”

  Josh nodded. “I know, I know. I’d probably kill her if I tried. Oh, crap, I didn’t mean that. Probably not something I should go around saying.” Josh ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. “Why don’t you come sit over by the kitchen? I’ll make you something to eat, and then you can talk to Brian while I finish up, okay? I’ve got a great mussel risotto tonight I ran as a special. Sound good?”

  I nodded a definite yes and followed him to the counter by the beautiful open kitchen.

  Brian was in the middle of plating Josh’s fabulous egg rolls. Josh had trained him well: Brian took great care in decorating the dish with sauces from squirt bottles.

  “Brian, Chloe’s going to sit up here while I finish up downstairs, okay?” Josh said flatly.

  “You bet. Good to see you again,” Brian said, smiling as he looked up from the plate. “You hungry?”

  “I’m getting her some risotto,” Josh answered for me.

  “You’ll love it,” Brian assured me.

  A few minutes later, I was spooning up the creamy rice dish, which was, of course, phenomenal. The dinner rush was finally dying down, and Brian moved near me as he wiped down the counters.

  “Josh is in a pissy mood tonight, huh? You’re probably the best thing for him right now.”

  “Yeah, I heard about the health inspector.”

  “You should have seen Josh earlier. After the inspector left, Josh was screaming and swearing in the back. Good thing it was before we opened, or the customers would’ve heard him. He threw a bunch of pans across the room, and he was having a fit until Maddie walked in and told him to cut it out.” Brian laughed. “She was so angry because she’d just bought a bunch of new cookware for the kitchen, and she was afraid he was going to break all of it.”

  This didn’t sound like the Josh I’d known for the past few weeks. But he was a chef dedicated to his kitchen—I knew that much.

  Brian kept on wiping the counter. “I was just glad she didn’t fire him for acting like such an ass. I mean, Josh was lucky enough to get this job. I didn’t want him to blow it.” Lucky?

  “What do you mean he was lucky to get this job?” I asked Brian.

  “Well,” Brian said as he leaned closer to me, “you probably know about Josh getting fired from the Langley Hotel? And from Spoons?”

  I had no idea what Brian was talking about. Josh had said that he’d hopped around a bit before settling down at Magellan, but he never said he’d been fired. Twice.

  Brian took my silence as ignorance and informed me that while working as a sous chef at the posh Langley Hotel restaurant, Josh had walked through the dining room sh
outing obscenities about the incompetent waitstaff and had promptly been terminated. Spoons, another well-known Boston eatery, had fired Josh for smashing a bunch of plates while cussing out the dishwashers for doing a terrible job.

  All news to me. My risotto was beginning to lose its flavor, but I nonetheless finished off half of the huge portion Josh had made for me.

  “He used to have a pretty mean temper,” Brian continued. “But he’s been totally great to me. Of course, he got angry today about the fridge and the mice and stuff, but usually he’s great. You just don’t want to piss him off, that’s for sure. If you ask me, all chefs are pretty volatile, but Josh is up there. Love him like a brother, though.”

  I watched Brian as he finished cleaning the counters, wrapped up meat to be stored, and sharpened the knives that had been used that evening. I’d had no idea about Josh’s history of losing his cool, and I didn’t know what to think. He took tremendous pride in his cooking and his kitchen; anything that threatened the quality of his work would certainly anger him. Josh’s temper must have been what Detective Hurley had been referring to when he’d said that I didn’t know Josh that well and had warned me to stay away from him. But Brian must be exaggerating. The restaurant business was so gossipy. The tales of Josh’s behavior must have blown up over time. At least I hoped so.

  As I watched Brian, I wondered whether Madeline would really replace Josh with someone so inexperienced. He grabbed Josh’s sharpening steel and began the chef’s ritual of honing the kitchen knives against the rod. Although I was almost mesmerized as he stroked the blades against the steel, I couldn’t help thinking how dangerous it was to repeatedly pull the blade toward himself. And he didn’t look half as cute as Josh did when he sharpened his knives.

  Josh finally finished work, and we stepped out of the restaurant and into the cool, dry evening air of mid-September. Since he had his car with him, we drove separately back to my place. Josh took a shower and changed into sweatpants. As attractive as he looked with his chest bare, I was remarkably uninterested in leaping under the covers with him. My head was swimming with information I’d acquired that evening, and I didn’t know what to make of any of it. We got into bed and lay there a foot apart. For the first time, something felt awkward between us.

  Josh looked at me. “I’m so tired. Do you mind if we just go to sleep?” I knew he had to get up before eight and go in to Magellan. The restaurant was closed tomorrow, but an upscale client was having a wedding reception for fifty people at five, and Josh needed to prep for it all day.

  He continued. “I’ve got so much to do for the party tomorrow, and for some stupid reason, I gave Brian the day off. Some of it’s prepped, and I’ve got a couple of the line cooks with me, but still …”

  “Sure. You need some sleep,” I said.

  I needed sleep, too; there was no point in staying up half the night trying to make sense of everything. Besides, I’d see Heather tomorrow at the spa, and she’d help me to think things out.

  I awoke at three in the morning with horrendous stomach cramps. I rolled over on my side in search of relief. I must be getting my period, I thought. But when I’d crawled to the bathroom on my hands and knees, I realized that the pain had nothing to do with my menstrual cycle—and everything to do with food poisoning.

  I spent two hours in the bathroom ridding my body of what I kept telling myself was some freakish parasite. Doubled over, all I could think was, The mussels. The goddamn mussels. My mind was racing. Oh my God! Josh gave me the mussels. He did this to me. That’s why he kept telling me not to call Detective Hurley, I thought miserably. He killed Eric, and now he’s murdering me with tainted mussels.

  Wait a minute. That didn’t make any sense. Although I was a little delirious from dehydration, I was able to understand that food poisoning was an unreliable murder method. Of course, I’d been sick for only a few hours. Maybe the illness would progress until I died right here on my ugly tile floor. While Josh slept peacefully in the other room. Or maybe the food poisoning was a warning? No! The health code violations: the mussels had made me sick because they’d been stored at too warm a temperature. And Josh had served them as a special that night at the restaurant!

  I limped to the couch and pulled a blanket over my shivering body. At least Josh hadn’t awakened to find me slumped over the toilet. Maybe I should have listened to Heather and to Detective Hurley. It was true that I hardly knew Josh. I hadn’t known anything about his outbursts at his previous jobs; the angry side of Josh was one I’d never seen. Realistically, I had no idea who he was.

  I heard the clock radio alarm go off in the bedroom at seven forty-five. Prince was hollering that he wanted to be someone’s lover. I was still half asleep when Josh walked in and found me in the living room. I tumbled off the couch in dehydrated shambles.

  “Hey, what’re you doing out here? Oh God, was I snoring or something?”

  “I’m sick. I was up all night throwing up,” I barked before going to the kitchen for water.

  “Oh, honey. Are you okay?” he asked, concerned.

  “No. I’m not okay. All I could taste was mussels. Which I will never eat again.”

  “Oh my God. You must have a stomach bug or something,” he called back sympathetically.

  I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, angrily clutching my glass of water. “That or the risotto made me sick.” I glared at him.

  “Wait, you think I gave you bad seafood?” He went to the bedroom and pulled on a shirt.

  “All I know is that you gave me dinner, and I puked it up for three hours,” I shot back.

  “Are you kidding me? You think I’d make you sick on purpose? There was nothing wrong with the food. I just got those mussels in yesterday. They couldn’t have been fresher!”

  “Fine, then I’m just sick, okay? And, by the way, why didn’t you tell me you’d been fired, twice, for throwing raging fits?” I knew I was being unreasonable, but I couldn’t stop myself from yelling at him.

  Josh was angry now, too. “Who the hell told you that?” he demanded.

  “It doesn’t matter. I just know, okay?” I was starting to cry. There was barely enough fluid left in my body to produce tears.

  “Oh, okay. I get it. So now you think I killed Eric, too, huh? You think I poisoned you because you’ve been trying to figure out who the murderer is? I’m outta here.” Josh threw on his shoes. “Call me when you catch the real murderer, Chloe,” Josh snapped as he walked out my back door.

  I didn’t stop him from leaving.

  NINETEEN

  “Heather, this is not a spa,” I informed my sister. I peeked out of my mummylike wrappings and glared at my monster of a sibling. “We belong in one of the Egyptian rooms at the Museum of Fine Arts.”

  “Chloe, this is very trendy right now. Try to embrace this experience, and you might actually benefit from it.”

  Heather had lied to me. Spa meant pedicures, facials, relaxing massages. This place, called Wrap It Out, was some bullshit fake of a spa where clients paid actual money to be entirely wrapped up in stretchy bandage material, doused with smelly liquid—embalming fluid?—and have supposed toxins extracted from their bodies. I was lying on a padded table, totally immobilized, and stuck there until the spa warden returned to unwrap me.

  “Especially,” she continued, “after your food poisoning experience. This is the perfect way to completely remove foreign substances from your skin. You won’t believe how refreshed you feel after. It’s wonderful,” she proclaimed, sighing with content.

  I rolled my head to the left and stuck my tongue out at her. I turned to the right and looked at Adrianna. Heather had surprised me by inviting Ade along for the torture.

  “Could we talk about something else, please? Anything to make time go faster?” Ade pleaded from her cocoon.

  “Fine,” Heather said. “Chloe, keep telling us about Josh and how he tried to murder you last night.”

  “He did not try to murder me. At least, well, he just cou
ldn’t have.”

  “The point is, you just told us that Josh has a history of unstable behavior and is a definite suspect. I told you you were rushing it,” Heather said.

  “No, that is not the point at all,” I shot back. “Josh is totally pissed off at me because I accused him of assaulting me with bad risotto.”

  “Look,” Adrianna began, spitting a loose bandage off her mouth, “nobody’s perfect, but that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with Eric’s murder or your food poisoning. So what if Josh has been fired? Life is not neat and orderly with everyone behaving in exemplary fashion at all times. Christ, Owen has been fired from zillions of jobs. Before he got the blimp job, he was the personal assistant to a comedian, then he cleaned the shark tank at the Aquarium, and then he was the golf ball marshal at that country club.”

  “A golf ball marshal?” Heather shrieked. “What kind of job is that?”

  “He was very important. Who do you think picks up all the stray golf balls off the course? But the manager found him swimming in the lily pond and asked him not to come back. See? So, Owen got fired from all those jobs, and he’s perfectly normal.” Ade paused. “Okay, he may be a little unusual, but it’s just taken him a while to settle in to something. Same thing for Josh. He had to work out some issues at those other restaurants, but he’s doing great at Magellan, right? And who cares if he freaks out once in a while? He’s passionate about his work, which is probably one of the reasons the restaurant is doing so well.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  “He sounds dangerous,” Heather warned.

  “Heather, Josh is no more dangerous than you or I,” Adrianna said. “Seriously, do you think I’d let Chloe go out with someone I thought had even the slightest chance of being a killer? Really. I met him, and he’s totally into your sister and totally harmless. I know she rushes into every relationship, but that’s because she’s passionate, just like Josh. Which is why they’re such a good match.”

  “And I think passionate is great. I do. But she also needs to display some sense of caution, guarded optimism, self-control, or whatever you want to call it,” Heather elaborated.