The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

  A piercing, high-pitched scream from the back of the gallery cut Naomi off. Like fans in a football stadium wave, the mass of people, suddenly silent, turned as one toward the continuing shrieks that reverberated throughout the cavernous room. Turning with the crowd, I saw Hannah standing at the far end of gallery, by the back hallway. Every part of her body was motionless except for her mouth, which opened and closed with each yell.

  During Naomi’s endless talk, I’d apparently acted on a subliminal desire to distance myself from her by inching my way out of the front room toward the giant egg and the booths in the back area. As one of the people closest to Hannah, I started to step toward her when Barry brushed past me, rushed to Hannah, and grabbed her shoulders. “Hannah? What’s wrong?”

  She pointed behind her to Eliot’s office. “He’s dead! He’s dead!” she said hysterically.

  For a second, I wondered why Barry, the food-loving partner in the Full Moon Group, had taken it upon himself to be the first to rush to Hannah. Then I remembered that she’d been in Boston working for the group for—how long had she said?—six weeks. And the partners, Barry and Oliver, must have known her before that, or they wouldn’t have gone to the expense of bringing her here from New York.

  Barry took a few steps to the doorway and peered in. “Oh, God! Oh, my God!” Barry disappeared into the office and immediately reappeared. “Oliver! It’s Oliver!” he called out. “Call nine one one!”

  By now, Josh was next to me. I caught his eye, and we silently agreed that he should get to Hannah before she had a total meltdown. I followed him. When he reached her, she fell into his arms and buried her head in his chest.

  “I think someone hit him on the head with your food processor!” Hannah’s voice was forced and had a strangely mechanical quality. Just as I was feeling worried about her and sorry for her, she did something so disgusting that I hate to report it: she used my boyfriend as a handkerchief. Josh, to his credit, made a face as she wiped her mascara-stained eyes and, yes, her runny nose on his brand-new chef’s coat. “His head is all … bashed in,” she stammered. To my relief, she did not go on to recite gory details.

  The crowd that moments ago had been shocked into silence was now bustling about and reaching into Prada purses and Gucci suits to pull out cell phones. A man up front began shouting, “A doctor! Is there a doctor here?” Another man was supporting Oliver’s wife, Dora, who had collapsed. She looked ghastly. Even from a distance, I could see that the stretched skin on her face, and especially on her forehead, had turned a peculiar shade of yellowish white. Oliver, I thought, wasn’t the only one who needed a doctor, and he was apparently beyond help. Well, in this group, there was certainly no shortage of doctors.

  Police, too, were available in large numbers. When Josh and I had arrived on Newbury Street, Food for Thought hadn’t even begun, and there had already been cops on the street corners. Now, four uniformed police officers entered the gallery. One positioned himself at the front door and loudly announced that no one was to leave.

  When I looked away from the front of the gallery, I saw Naomi rescuing Josh from Hannah. “Hannah, how horrible for you!” Naomi said, her voice shaking. She looked more freaked than Hannah did. Her face was pale, but I could tell that she was trying to gear herself into clinical mode and was determined to assess any psychological trauma that Hannah might be experiencing. I assumed that Hannah would resent Naomi’s typical hand-holding, but within moments, the two were clutching each other and sobbing. Actually, Naomi was sobbing, and Hannah was simply looking frozen with shock, so it was hard to tell who was comforting whom. But at least Naomi had detached Hannah from my boyfriend.

  “Chloe Carter?” I spun around to see the only detective in the world I knew, Scott Hurley.

  “Detective Hurley. How are you?” Not the smartest question. He looked even more haggard than the last time I’d seen him. I’d met Scott Hurley last fall and had immediately thought that he desperately needed a long vacation in Aruba. Tonight, his scraggly black hair and unshaven face assured me that he was as overworked as ever.

  “Peachy,” he said with sarcastic exhaustion. “Josh, how you doin’? Chloe, I’ll talk to you first, then Josh. We’re gonna need statements and contact info from everybody here before you can go.”

  8. Being questioned by police regarding revolting food-processor murder.

  Hurley glanced up and called to an officer. “Connors! The docs are here. Help ’em through,” he ordered. I decided to keep my back to the EMTs to avoid watching them wheel Oliver out of the gallery. Because of the thousands of hours I’d spent watching TV crime shows, I was relatively sure that the body wouldn’t be moved for ages, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  I followed the detective to the side of the room. My mother waved to me from across the crowd and smiled, as though watching her daughter being led off by a detective were the most normal thing she’d ever seen.

  Hurley leaned against the wall and yanked a notepad and pen from his pocket. “Tell me what you know about tonight.”

  As much as I wanted to impress a law enforcement official by issuing dramatic statements about key events I’d witnessed, I had nothing useful to say, or so it seemed to me. I explained why I was here and said that I’d been up front when Hannah screamed. I had just met Oliver and knew almost nothing about him. I’d been paying no attention to what was happening at the back of the gallery.

  Hurley looked down as he wrote. “The back door to the alley is open. Do you know who did that?” As I shook my head, I noticed that the high humidity tonight was making him sweat more than usual.

  “It had been hot in here,” I said. “So I noticed the cool breeze coming from back there, but I don’t know who opened the door.”

  “You were here with your boss, Naomi Campbell?” He paused. “Is that her real name?”

  I nodded and pointed her out.

  “Was she with you, too? When you left your table? And when the screaming started?”

  I shook my head. “No, she was still at our table when Josh and I headed up front. But she must have left pretty soon after that to give her speech. She was still speaking up front when Hannah started screaming.”

  “Who else did you see while you were up front?”

  “Well, between you and me, Naomi didn’t give the most scintillating speech I’ve ever heard, so people were kind of milling around and talking through most of it. Well, after Naomi had been talking for five minutes, maybe. People were bored. And they started to leave partway through, so I’m not sure who was where. Although I’m pretty sure my family was up front all night, since they knew I was irritated with them for bringing my ex-boyfriend, Sean, here tonight. My parents are here and my sister and her husband. My sister’s the one who invited my ex-boyfriend. I mean, seriously, would you show up somewhere with your sister’s ex while she is perfectly happy with her new chef boyfriend? Anyway, they were all here.”

  Uninterested in hearing about my family drama, Hurley took my phone number and asked me to get Josh.

  I sent Josh to the detective, who, I was sure, wanted to know all about the Robocoupe that had been transformed from culinary appliance to murder weapon. Josh, I knew, hadn’t had a chance to wash the Robocoupe, and I idly wondered whether Oliver’s body was spattered with vinaigrette. Josh had poured out the dressing, but some of it must have remained in the bowl of the machine. And the murderer? Would traces of vinaigrette cling to the murderer’s clothing? Or had the killer used only the heavy base of the Robocoupe, without the bowl?

  I stood haplessly by myself watching the chaotic scene before me. Charity-goers were being interviewed by police officers, flashbulbs were going off near Eliot’s office, and the heat and stuffiness in the room had everyone on the verge of melting. The police had obviously closed the door to the alley. Dora, Oliver’s widow, was huddled on the floor, where she was being comforted by Sarka, Barry’s wife. Both of them, it occurred to me, looked unhealthy. Dora’s color was still a ghastly yel
lowish white. In any case, the bright overhead lights meant to show artwork at its best had the opposite effect on Dora. Instead of looking young, her overtreated skin looked stretched and thin. As to Sarka, she was what in some circles might be considered fashionably thin, but in my eyes she just looked malnourished.

  A voice interrupted my morbid reflections. “Chloe.” Ugh, Hannah. Shouldn’t she be sequestered by someone for something? She’d found the body, for God’s sake. Someone should be preventing her from escaping! Hannah, I might mention, looked like a model in an ad for multivitamins. In the brilliant gallery lighting, her hair was shiny, and her white teeth sparkled.

  “Hello. Have you spoken to the police yet?” I asked in the hope of shoving her toward Detective Hurley and away from me.

  “Just briefly. I have to stay here until they can take a more lengthy, formal statement from me,” she said smugly. Little Miss Snooty seemed to feel quite the celebrity tonight, what with discovering the body and all. Christ, it’s not like she was going to be whisked off to the Four Seasons and pampered while she narrated her torturous night.

  “This might not be the right time,” she started, “but you should know that Josh and I have a connection. He may be with you now, but you have to understand that doesn’t change how he and I feel about each other.” She must’ve been sniffing too many of those silly snap peas she’d been carrying around.

  “Yeah, okay, Hannah,” I said. Even I wouldn’t stoop to picking a fight with someone who’d just found Oliver battered to death with a Robocoupe.

  “I’ve been in Boston for a little while now, but I’ve been waiting to call him.” She cocked her head to the side and blew her bangs out of her eyes. They fell neatly back in place and didn’t stick straight up at freaky angles the way mine would have. “I saw he was going to be at this gallery tonight with Simmer, and I knew this would be the right time for us to see each other again.”

  I took a deep breath. Think about your social work training, Chloe. People deal with trauma in very different ways. Her head is probably spinning, and she is trying to regain a sense of normality by going back to something familiar, namely Josh. Except that this little snot had been eyeing my Josh before the murder. She is a dirtbag!

  “I cannot believe Oliver is dead,” Hannah continued as though she were talking to herself. “This completely fouls up all my work for the Full Moon Group.” I expected her to stomp her feet and march off like a seven-year-old. Unfortunately, she remained where she was.

  “I’m sure. It’s so irritating when your boss dies and interferes with your marketing campaign, huh?” What a bitch this girl was! I was considering smashing her head in with a Robocoupe when Sean showed up.

  “Hey, weird night, huh?” At least we now had a topic of conversation other than my dumping him and breaking his heart.

  “Sure is. Sean, this is Hannah,” I said dismissively. “Oliver was her boss.” Would she just leave already?

  “Nice to meet you.” Sean held out his hand to monster girl and looked appalled at my insensitivity. “I’m sorry for your loss. What a dreadful night you’ve had. Are you all right? Would you like a glass of water or anything?” As usual, Sean was the epitome of caring and gentleness.

  Hannah, suddenly demure, thought perhaps she should sit down for a moment. I rolled my eyes as Sean dashed off to find a chair for the damsel in distress.

  Josh had finished with Detective Hurley and joined Hannah and me.

  “They’re taking my Robocoupe and everything from my table, can you believe that? The Robocoupe I can understand. I don’t even want that thing back after what happened. But the platters? My butane burner? What a pain in the neck.”

  “Chloe! They’ve confiscated our flyers!” Naomi had appeared, enraged that the police were collecting all of the Organization’s materials from the evening. I silently thanked the Boston Police Department for saving me from having to sort, file, lug around, and otherwise deal with the countless posters and papers from our table.

  Eliot appeared, looking totally bedraggled and defeated by the night’s events. I couldn’t imagine how upset he must feel that his gallery had become a crime scene. Would the murder really hurt his business? Maybe it would attract ghouls and drive off the kinds of people who bought gigantic granite eggs and oil paintings of operations.

  “Folks,” he said, putting one hand on Naomi’s back and one on Josh’s, “this is obviously a terrible way to end the evening. I know we all had high hopes for publicity and fund-raising tonight, but that all takes a backseat to Oliver Kipper’s murder.” Eliot’s protruding eyes produced a few tears, and he shook his head a few times as if to gather himself together. “I need to stick around, but I’m sure you can all go home.”

  “Not all of you.” Detective Hurley interrupted. He peered down at his notebook. “Hannah Hicks? You’ll need to stay.”

  SIX

  The next morning, I woke up to Josh’s cell phone shrilly echoing throughout my apartment. Ugh. I was on school vacation and was not to be disturbed while catching up on post-crummy-evening sleep. By the time Josh and I had managed to slip past my parents and our exes without formal, awkward good-byes, it had been pretty late. Our drive home had been full of sighing and head-shaking and the unspoken agreement that there was no need to pick things apart: not the reemergence of both Hannah and Sean on the same night and not the grotesque murder that had been committed with one of Josh’s kitchen appliances. I think both of us felt embarrassed by our disappointment that the evening had obviously been less about Josh’s food than one would have hoped, so we had kept repeating things like, “How awful!” and “Poor man!”

  Josh had left early to go in to Simmer and had obviously forgotten his cell phone, a lapse that showed how tired he must’ve been when he’d left. But with only two days until New Year’s Eve and the opening, he had a mountain of work to tackle. His phone had been ringing constantly over the past few weeks as he set up purveyors to handle the restaurant’s food supply and searched for kitchen staff. I’d better pick up the phone and give whoever was calling Simmer’s number.

  “Josh’s phone,” I murmured, still half asleep.

  “What? Who is this? I need Josh!” a woman shrieked insanely.

  I completely hate it when someone calls me and then demands to know who picked up the phone. “Who is this?” I asked calmly.

  “Who is this?” she repeated even more hysterically. “Give Josh the phone now!”

  “This is Chloe. Josh can’t come to the phone. Can I take a message?”

  “What? No, you can’t take a message. This is Hannah, and I’ve been at the police station all night, where I’ve been terrorized by a bunch of idiots who want to know everything about the Full Moon Group and what happened last night, where I was and what I saw! What is wrong with this city? Josh needs to come get me. Please!”

  Oh, God. Even I felt sorry for her. Since she’d spent the entire night at the police station, it was no wonder she was coming unglued. But didn’t she have anybody else in Boston to call besides her ex-boyfriend? Still, there was a limit to how nice I was going to be to Hannah, who’d just threatened to steal Josh back. Not that he’d want her. Even so.

  “Are you still at the police station?” I asked.

  She whimpered. “Yes, and I don’t have a car and I don’t even know how to get home.”

  “All right, give me the address. And then go wait outside.”

  I vaguely recognized the address she gave me, but never having been held for questioning, I had no picture in my mind of exactly where the police station was. Josh knew nearly every single street in this city and would’ve known exactly how to get there. As he explained it, he’d been lost in every possible location while driving around looking for undiscovered markets where he could buy unusual ingredients and ethnic specialties. But there was no way I was going to call him and send him Hannah’s way. I just hoped I knew where I was going.

  Josh had told me last night that Hannah was a tough, indep
endent woman who usually got weepy and needy only when her tears and pleas served a purpose. He had said that even he had thought she’d looked pretty shaken up after finding Oliver’s body. At a guess, Hannah had sensed his sympathy, and this morning phone call of hers was an effort to play on it.

  Although I was willing to drive into Boston to get Hannah, I was hardly going to roll out of bed in my pajamas and race downtown without making an effort to look at least semidecent. Even after a night of what I hoped had been relentless interrogation under bright lights, Hannah probably retained her neat-as-a-pin look, and I was not about to be shown up by Josh’s ex. Besides, rescuing Hannah, I told myself, was a test of social work professionalism; I was off to meet with a traumatized client and had an obligation to look professional. As it turned out, my professionalism translated into a tight shirt over a heavily padded bra, skintight pants, and tall black boots, not to mention the twenty minutes with a flatiron needed to calm down the effects of last night’s humidity on my hair. It had cooled off today, but it was still abnormally warm for December in Boston.

  I then spent six minutes staring at Ken the hermit crab in an effort to determine whether he was alive or not. There did appear to be some crab tracks in the sand, so I hoped he’d been taking midnight strolls across his cage. I changed his water dish, scooped up something gross that must be crab poop, and sprayed the tank with a water bottle. Heather had told me that misting the hermit crabs was supposed to increase their activity level, but Ken seemed as outraged by humidity as I was and stayed hidden in his shell.

  Since I couldn’t pick Hannah up in the pigsty I called a car, I spent ten minutes tossing embarrassing CDs into the glove compartment—six volumes of Now That’s What I Call Music, two American Idol compilations, and a few other horrors—and throwing out Dunkin’ Donuts cups and half-eaten candy canes. I displayed Josh’s CDs on the passenger seat to give the impression that I frequently drove around listening to System of a Down, Mudvayne, Drowning Pool, and Papa Roach and was quite possibly the coolest girlfriend in the entire world.