The Gourmet Girl Mysteries, Volume 1

by Jessica Conant-Park

She pulled a chair up next to mine. “I think it is important that we process what happened at the Food for Thought event. Although we hear about violent crimes in the paper and on television, we were present at the scene of a terrible tragedy, and I’d like us to use each other as sounding boards to express any emotions we are experiencing. Chloe”—she paused and looked at me hard—“how are you?”

  I knew that if I said, “Fine,” the single innocuous word would lead to a lengthy discussion about my repressing unbearable emotions, so I lied and blathered on for a bit about how I was coping and leaning on Josh for support. “And how about you, Naomi? Do you have someone special you can lean on?”

  “Thank you for your concern. I have a very good support system in place. Now, moving along, let’s talk about the current cases we’re dealing with. In particular, there is a young woman I’ve spoken to a number of times. The same woman who left that message on your voice mail the other day, remember? She has chosen not to give any identifying information about herself, which is fine, but I think that it’s because she is so terrified of her employer. I spoke with her a few days ago, and her situation was unbearable. Her contact with one of her bosses disgusts me. He continually makes sexual advances, touches her inappropriately, and uses explicit language when speaking with her. Every caller we get deserves our full commitment, but no one is more needy or deserving of our help than this woman.”

  I knew exactly the caller Naomi meant and had to get her off the subject of this woman because, when I’d taken her first call, I’d given my usual unorthodox advice about fending off jerks by eating stinky foods. In answering the hotline, I tried to begin by following the standard recommendations from the manual, but I sometimes had to move beyond the book in ways that would have infuriated Naomi. For example, I didn’t want her to find out that I frequently suggested that women take self-defense classes and practice their moves on abusive bosses.

  “You know, Chloe,” continued Naomi, “I cannot stand to think of another woman waking up in the morning, frightened to death about having to go to work. I’ve never told you this, but I’ve been through this firsthand.”

  I stared at Naomi. “What?”

  “The year before I went to graduate school, I was working in a bank. I just had a teller job, and I was trying to save money that year for school. It was the worst year of my life. The bank manager seemed like a really wonderful guy. Married, pregnant wife, a real family man who was well liked by everyone I worked with.” She took a deep breath and went on. “I thought he was really nice, too, until the harassment started. I was young and insecure, and at first, his comments seemed like compliments, and I’m embarrassed to say that I was flattered by some of the things he said. It seemed like harmless flirting, I guess, at the time.” She paused. “And then his comments became more suggestive. He started touching me in passing and pretending his touches were accidental. Asking me out, wanting to be alone with me … well, it became terrible and scary. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I felt partially responsible because I’d been stupid enough to like some of his initial attention. When I’d ask him to stop, he’d ignore me. By the time I finally got around to speaking to the HR people, I was miserable. And you know what HR did? Nothing. Not a thing. They told me I had no proof and that this man had been an exemplary employee for all his years with the bank and it was highly unlikely that he was doing any of the things I was describing. I could fill out some paperwork if I wanted, and they could look into it, but it was my word against his, and perhaps I’d better just find another job.” Naomi had tears in her eyes.

  I reached out and touched her leg. “Naomi, I’m so sorry you went through that. I had no idea.”

  “And so I left the bank. I didn’t know what else to do. There was no one to give me advice and tell me what to do. The sexual harassment policy seemed like a token paragraph thrown into the HR manual. No one there had any training in how to implement the policy or how to handle complaints. I felt alone and frightened. I knew what he was doing was wrong, but I didn’t know what steps to take to protect myself. That’s when I decided that this is the kind of work I’d get into. I had planned on working with teen mothers after school, but this work became my calling. After my own experience. That’s why I’m so driven by my work here.”

  I immediately felt horrible for all the times I’d made fun of Naomi behind her back. It made me queasy to think of anyone terrorizing her. As much as her outspoken, overly dramatic style and her use of social work catchphrases (“Provide access for the disenfranchised!”) drove me crazy, she had grown on me. And now I was proud that Naomi had transformed her terrible experience with her manager into a motivating force to assist other women who needed help.

  “And this young woman who’s been calling reminds me of myself in some ways. When you work for a small business like she does, it’s even worse. She’s got nobody to help her except us, Chloe. She doesn’t deserve what she’s had to put up with!” Naomi was vehement. “And just because this Full Moon Group has money and power over her doesn’t mean they can get away with this!” Naomi clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh!”

  “She works for the Full Moon Group?” No way! My mind raced. Finally, a motive to implicate my favorite suspect! If harassment occurred at the Full Moon Group, maybe Oliver had harassed Hannah, who’d murdered him in self-defense! Or in a vengeful rage! On second thought, I realized that the Full Moon Group must have lots of female employees besides Hannah and that the sicko harasser could be someone other than Oliver. It could be Barry, for instance, or someone in charge at one of Full Moon’s locations.

  “I shouldn’t have said that. I can’t believe I violated her privacy like that. You’re a coworker, after all, but this caller has been so secretive. She only revealed her employer to me accidentally in one of our conversations. I’m not even sure she’s aware that she did so. I was just letting her talk and vent some of what’s been going on for her, and it came out. So, obviously, we need to keep this information to ourselves, as with all of the information we get from hotline callers.”

  “Absolutely,” I assured her. Confidentiality was no joke here. Women who called were not only desperate to stop harassment but desperate to hold onto their jobs, and they were usually too scared to give us much information about where they were calling from. When the women called from work, they sometimes whispered so nobody would hear them talking. Another sad fact was that we often had no way to return calls, since many women didn’t give us their home phone numbers because they didn’t want their husbands or partners to know what was going on. Although it was the harassers who should have been ashamed of themselves, it was the victims who felt embarrassed and guilty.

  “Do you want to show me your list of things that cause you anger?”

  Uh-oh. “Um, I’m still working on it. Can we review that later?”

  Naomi agreed but reminded me of the importance of this insightful exercise. When we’d wrapped up our meeting, I jumped on the Internet to search for anything I could find about Oliver’s murder. Most of the links led me to pages with brief accounts. Nowhere could I find new information. One page, from the food section of a newspaper, mentioned the murder but focused on Simmer and “its up-and-coming young chef, Josh Driscoll.” The article included details about Josh’s background and sample menu items, and the number to call for reservations. A lengthy description of the design and decor of the new restaurant, together with polished quotes from Gavin, made me suspect that he’d had enough clout to persuade someone to include the material.

  I did find Oliver’s obituary, which appeared with a photo, but was surprisingly brief. It stated that he was survived by his wife, Dora, and that a private memorial service was planned for a later date. After everything Adrianna had said about Dora’s extravagance, I wondered why she wasn’t giving her husband a lavish funeral.

  “Chloe?” Naomi said as she put on her winter coat. “I’ve got to run out and drop off this thank-you present to Eliot for welcoming us so gracio
usly to his gallery. Be back in an hour or so, okay?” I wondered what the gift was. Probably New Age candles or a book on speaking openly with your inner child.

  “Sure. I’ll see you later.”

  Back to the important work of surfing the Web. I searched for information on hermit crabs. My goal was to learn how to keep Ken alive. In minutes, I’d discovered an entire population of people out there frighteningly devoted to their pet crabs. I learned that Ken would need a bath once a week. I’d have to dump him into a bowl of water and let him slide around for a few minutes while he washed out his shell. I could handle that.

  What I could not handle was that Ken was going to molt. Yuck! He would burrow himself in the sand and look dead for a few days, and then would move from his shell into another, slightly larger, shell. I immediately concluded that Ken’s cage would have to be shrouded during this process. The sight of a shell-less Ken would make me puke. But I’d have to buy him some alternative shells. The site I was looking at even sold a large number of hand-painted hermit crab shells in various sizes. For eight ninety-five plus shipping, Ken could sport a Spiderman, tie-dye, or bull’s-eye shell. And here I was dressing (housing?) him in plain brown! I decided that if Ken decided to actually move in my presence, I’d reward his good behavior with a decorative shell or maybe with a decorative cage background or the toys and fancy lighting the site also sold.

  I read a long paragraph on how to determine whether or not your hermit crab was dead, and I silently cursed Walker for having given me a pet that required study to determine whether he was even alive. And should the crab, in fact, be dead, I could click on the link that took me to the Hermit Crab Memorial Page. I went ahead and clicked on the assumption that Ken wouldn’t make it much beyond New Year’s. Oh, this had to be a joke! Should Ken pass on to “Hermie Heaven,” I could go and post a eulogy on the site. Pages and pages of memorials to dead crabs loomed in front of me with wistful words from their owners. “Oh, Bingo! You were the best little guy. It’s so hard to lose a pet, and you will be missed more than words can say. You will always be loved. See you again …” Oh, good God. “Only a tiny bit of time with a tiny bit of a crab, but a giant hole in my heart.” And my favorite: “I never had the chance to name you. I took you home, but it seems the car ride was too much for you to handle. When you hardly moved and then your leg fell off, I knew.” The other crab forums were filled with pleading messages from owners seeking help from other hermit crab fanatics: “Hermit crab missing legs!” and “Can I use a hamster ball with my hermit crab?” and “Something has gone dreadfully wrong!” and “Traveling with crabs?”

  Some hermit crab owners, I concluded, were more devoted to their pets than Dora had evidently been to Oliver. He’d rated nothing better than a short obituary. Where was his wife’s loving eulogy to him?

  After learning more than anyone should want to know about the hermit crab world, I took a quick look at the Full Moon’s locations. Lunar, Eclipse, and the Big Dipper all had Web sites boasting the best evening entertainment Boston had to offer. Eclipse’s site showed a calendar of guest DJs, theme nights, and drink specials, and a link to the menu, which had wings, potato skins, and nachos: bar food and nothing else. I knew from Josh that food like that was all purchased frozen and in bulk, tossed in a Frialator or oven, and plated to serve. Nothing challenging here for a chef, that was for sure, and I could see why Barry might have the itch to do something more creative. Lunar’s food was slightly more upscale and pricey than Eclipse’s. Its Web site showed pictures of young, drunk women with overly waxed eyebrows and spray tans hovering above elaborate appetizers and clutching colorful cocktails in their French-manicured hands. Yawn. This place was a meat market for the young and wealthy. I was ashamed to remember that in the days before Josh and Owen, I’d been in Lunar a few times with Adrianna and that we’d gone there to toss ourselves into the singles scene. Worse, I had to admit to myself that I’d had a pretty good time knocking back grapefruit cosmopolitans and Long Island iced teas. Would I go there for dinner? No. But for a good time with friends? Maybe. But I realized that I’d love to go poke around Full Moon’s so-called restaurants with Josh to check out the employees and see whether they knew anything about Hannah the Horrible. But I’d never get Josh into one of these places. And I didn’t think he’d be overly supportive of my desire to prove his ex-girlfriend guilty of murder. Maybe I could get Adrianna to go with me.

  I checked my e-mail, deleted four messages suggesting that I enlarge my penis, and shut down the computer. It was already eleven. I couldn’t believe how much time I’d spent reading about Ken. I wanted to see Josh at Simmer before I met Adrianna at Moving On. I threw on my coat and was locking the door to the office when Naomi’s voice rang down the corridor.

  “I’m back! Just leave it open,” she called breathlessly. “Sorry I took so long. I wanted to catch you before you left for Moving On. I’m really proud of you for spending the afternoon there. I know you’ll do great work today!” I had a feeling she was going to lean in for a hug, so I busied myself with the buttons on my coat. Naomi was the most touchy-feely person I’d ever known. She attributed the need to hug all the time to the emotional heaviness of our work. She was forever spouting positive messages of empowerment (“We are strong enough to give ourselves to others!” and “Reach beyond your self-imposed limits!”) while gripping me in a tight embrace. Although I really did like Naomi and was learning a lot from her, there were only so many times a day I wanted her arms flung around me.

  “I’ll call you later,” I promised her as I headed off to Simmer.

  One smelly T ride later, I exited the subway at Newbury Street. Outside Simmer, a man on a ladder was putting the finishing touches on a glass panel with the restaurant’s name etched through the opaque sign. I walked through an area with a low wrought-iron fence—the outdoor patio for use in warm weather—and entered through the unlocked front door. When I’d been here two weeks earlier, I’d been alarmed to see the unfinished state of the restaurant. The unpainted drywall, the cords dangling from the ceiling, and the concrete floors had worried me. On New Year’s Eve, would the customers be eating off paper plates while perching on folding chairs? Now I could finally see what the finished Simmer would look like. For a start, there was an actual floor. Better yet, it was beautifully tiled in rich browns with thick grout lines between each tile. The grout would be hard to clean, but the rustic style gave the restaurant a homey feel. The plaster walls had been textured using brushes swept vertically and horizontally to suggest linen, then painted a warm beige and framed with dark wood molding. Wall vases, paintings, and mosaic panels decorated the large room. As I watched, a man was installing dramatic, ultramodern light fixtures. Except for calculating that the expensive remodeling was contributing to Josh’s low salary, I felt relieved to see that Simmer was coming together. Josh had told me that Gavin wanted the restaurant to have a “worldly” feel in its decor and its food rather than to have a single ethnic theme.

  Gavin was clear that he wanted the menu to reflect many different culinary influences; what mattered to the owner was the quality and variety of the dishes. There would be Asian-style sashimi plates as well as Southwestern-influenced soups and gourmet Italian pasta dishes. Josh loved the freedom. The challenge, Josh had told me, was to avoid dishes that couldn’t be paired with any others and to make sure that there was some sort of cohesive quality to the menu as a whole.

  The square tables and high-backed chairs were in place, and the bar at the front of the room was well-stocked with high-end liquor. Matt, the bartender Gavin had lured away from a South End restaurant, was behind the stone counter feeding glasses into racks suspended from a high shelf.

  “Chloe?”

  Gavin walked toward me, all smiles. “So, what do you think?”

  “It’s beautiful. It really is. Congratulations.”

  “You here to see Josh?” he asked.

  I nodded, and he pointed to the back of the restaurant.

  “
He’s in the kitchen with Snacker. Make yourself at home. I’ve got to make some calls, if you’ll excuse me. We’re missing half of our goddamn bowls that were left out of our dishware order. They charged us for them but forgot to deliver them, so now I have to yell at some poor schmuck and make sure they get overnighted to us. Ah, the joys of being a business owner.” Even with last-minute problems, Gavin couldn’t conceal his excitement about Simmer’s impending opening; he was practically glowing. “But there’s nothing like Newbury Street. I can’t wait until that patio opens up. The people watching, the atmosphere, the food … I can’t wait! We’ve already had a bunch of curious neighbors pop in to check us out. Hair stylists, store owners, they’ve been stopping by wanting to see what kind of food we’ll be doing. Everybody wants to get an in with us before we open. So, anyway, I’ve got make this call, but I’ll walk you back to the kitchen.”

  I followed Gavin to the back and then through the large wooden doors that swung into the kitchen.

  “I’ll see you at the opening, right, Chloe?”

  I nodded, and Gavin headed off to the left to his office.

  Josh and Snacker were hovering over one of the gigantic gas stoves. “Perfect, perfect, perfect,” Josh was saying happily. Both chefs were wearing their spotless new white coats, baggy black pants, and shiny black leather kitchen clogs. Give it a couple of days, and those sparkling outfits would be saturated with odors and marred by splotches that no detergent could remove.

  When Gavin had started construction on Simmer, I’d hoped that Josh would have a magnificently generous workspace. Giving the chef a big kitchen, however, would have meant reducing the amount of space at the front of the house and consequently decreasing the number of tables available to paying customers. Not that this kitchen was cramped, but on a busy night with a full staff, things might get tight. Three huge tiers of stainless-steel shelves held sauté pans, stockpots, and roasting pans. The stoves, ovens, and other major pieces of equipment hogged space, of course, and small appliances were everywhere: blenders, food processors, stick blenders, and a giant mixer.