Dying for a Taste

by Leslie Karst

  “Yeah, maybe I will. Thanks.” I folded the letters up and put them and the photo back in my bag. “Oh, and any chance you could you send me that photo, too?”

  “Sure.” As Ruth was typing in my e-mail address, our appetizers arrived. “There, sent.” She stood and, giving me another quick hug, headed back to the kitchen.

  “Well, that was something, anyway,” Nichole observed, digging into her salad. “A real-live clue. So you gonna try to talk to that pastry chef woman tomorrow? Who knows—maybe she’ll break the case wide open.”

  “Right, that’ll happen.” I picked up my fork with a shake of my head, but one taste of the leek and endive gratin I’d ordered chased off all thoughts of photographs and clues. Oozing cheese and cream, it had been topped with panko and placed under the salamander until crispy and golden brown. Pure, unadulterated joy.

  ***

  I woke up Saturday morning with a parched mouth and a raging headache. After our dinner, Mei had suggested a nightcap at Absinthe just a few blocks away. Standing at the bar, which was packed four deep with the thirsty postballet and symphony crowd, I had been talked into trying a Sazerac, a sort of old-fashioned with the addition of a shot of fluorescent-green Absinthe. Deadly, in other words. Especially after our predinner gimlets and my share of the two bottles of Côtes du Rhône we ended up ordering.

  The luminous clock face on the side table read six fifteen, and all was silent except for the occasional car motor rattling the wood-frame window above my head. I rolled out of the saggy sofa bed and crept down the hallway, tracing the walls with my fingers as I made my way through the dark and unfamiliar house to the bathroom. Locating a bottle of Advil in the medicine cabinet, I downed three pills along with a large glass of water. I then returned to bed and slept for another three hours.

  I’d arranged to show up at Bolinas Farms the next day around one, which gave me plenty of time to stop back by Escarole in the morning. Since Nichole was coming with me up to the farm, she tagged along as well.

  As soon as we got out of the car, we could tell that Martine had already been at work for some time. Wafting across the parking lot came the heavenly aroma of freshly baked . . . bread? Pies? Napoleons? It was impossible to say exactly what we were smelling. Probably a combination of all of the above.

  I opened the screen door into the kitchen and poked my head inside. A tall, slender woman in chef’s whites and a pink baseball cap stood in the corner of the room with her back to us, working with some dough at a long countertop. The stereo was on, blasting out vintage Fleetwood Mac, and she didn’t hear when I called her name. I waited for the end of the song and then called out again. “Martine?”

  She started and turned around.

  “Sorry to scare you.”

  “That’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting anybody.” I thought I detected a slight foreign accent, but it could have just been a product of my imagination on account of her name. “Can I help you with something?”

  I told her who I was and that Ruth had suggested I speak to her concerning my questions about Letta.

  “Oh.” She shoved a loose lock of blond hair back under her cap, leaving a streak of flour on her forehead. “Sure. Come on in.” Nichole followed me into the kitchen, and I introduced her. “I’ve got to get these rolls formed right away; they won’t wait,” Martine said, turning back to the counter. “But I can talk to you while I do it.”

  She started tearing pieces of dough from the large mound before her, deftly rolling them into small, evenly sized balls and setting them on an enormous baking pan lined with parchment paper. “So do they know who did it yet?” she asked, finishing one row and starting another.

  I had come to expect this question by now whenever I talked to anybody new about Letta’s death and had my stock answer ready.

  “It’s been ages since I’ve seen her, you know.” Martine hefted the now-full pan, and Nichole and I backed out of her way. Sliding it onto the top shelf of a bakery rack, she pulled out an empty one and started lining it once more with balls of dough. “When she left Escarole to go gallivanting about the Pacific, she pretty much cut off all her old friends. So I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

  “Well, here. Check out this picture, and see if you recognize the woman in it.”

  Martine ceased her rolling and leaned over to take a look at the photo I was holding before her. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. That’s Kate. She used to bartend at some women’s bar in the Castro that was popular back in the early 1980s. I don’t think it exists anymore.” She set the ball of dough down on the pan and scratched her nose. “Wow. I haven’t thought about her in years. You know, I do believe she and Letta actually hooked up together at some point . . .”

  Martine turned to face me, her expression saying, “Oops, maybe I’ve said too much.”

  “It’s okay. I know about her and Letta. And as a matter of fact, I think they’d recently gotten back together again.”

  “Whad’ya know.” Martine resumed forming her rolls, a pensive look on her face. “I must say I’m a little surprised, because Kate had quite the temper back in the day. A real Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if you know what I mean. I think it might have been one of the reasons they originally broke up. But then again, maybe she’s mellowed with age.” Martine started to set a ball onto the sheet pan, but then her shoulders tensed, and she turned toward me again. “You don’t think . . . Kate?”

  “I don’t think, or know, anything much at this point. That’s why I’m asking everyone all these questions. But I am going up to Marin to see her this afternoon. She’s got a farm there now.”

  “That’s a change from bartending. But then I guess all of us have changed a lot from the way we were back in the eighties.”

  Next I showed her the letters and the photo Ruth had forwarded to my phone. But no luck on either front; Martine couldn’t think of anyone in particular who might have sent the letters to Letta or complained about the meat on her menu.

  “But then again,” she said, “I’ve never hung out with the hardcore foodie types. And being a baker, I don’t get too much flak from animal rights folks. Maybe I would if I used lard—which makes for such a better pastry crust—but since we’ve never been able to find a reliable source of lard from pastured pork, Ruth thinks it best that I stick with butter.” She shrugged. “And I guess after seeing those letters, maybe she’s right.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You got cash for the toll? How much is it these days, anyway?” We were just entering the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge—the tips of its rust-red towers lost in the low-hanging clouds—had jumped into view.

  “It’s like seven bucks now, if you can believe that. Unless you’ve got FasTrak, and then it’s cheaper.” Nichole swiveled her body to follow the flight of several ducks that had taken off from the Palace of Fine Arts pond. “But it’s only for the other direction,” she said, turning back around. “And they don’t take cash anymore, in any case. They’ll just send you a bill in the mail.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “You must not cross the bridge much, ’cause they changed it ages ago. If you don’t have FasTrak, they scan your license plate or something and mail you the bill. It’s to speed up traffic.”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem to be working that great right now,” I observed as we slowed to a crawl. It was a rain-free Saturday morning and sightseers, as well as folks like us fleeing the City for the wilds of Marin County, were out in droves. I braked behind a stopped pickup truck, and as I shifted into first and let out the clutch to creep forward again, the T-Bird stalled.

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “What? I didn’t say anything.”

  “But you were thinking it, I know.” I restarted the engine. “I’m still getting used to the stick shift. It’s been a while.”

  “Want me to drive?” Nichole asked, hope in her eyes.

  “No way, José.”

  We picked up pace again once past the vista point
on the other side of the bay and cruised along until we hit Sausalito. Luckily, we were turning off the freeway right after the yacht harbor, as I could tell it would have been mighty slow going continuing on up to San Rafael.

  Taking the exit for Highway 1, we twisted and turned our way west back toward the coast. In my old Accord, I would have thought this an unpleasant experience, but in the T-Bird, it felt like being a kid on the old Disneyland Autopia ride, whizzing around the corners in our nifty little sports car.

  “So that was interesting about Kate having been a bartender,” I shouted over the wind.

  “Yeah, and in the Castro,” Nichole yelled back. “Man, I wish I coulda seen it back then in the eighties before the area got so yuppified.”

  “Ah yes, those romantic days of AIDS and the ghettoization of gays,” I said, prompting Nichole to hit me in the arm. “Ow! No fair accosting the driver.”

  Once at Muir Beach, since we still had two hours to kill and were only about thirty minutes south of Bolinas, we decided to stop for a bite to eat at the Pelican Inn. This half-timbered Tudor knockoff, Nichole informed me, had been constructed near the site of the landing of Sir Francis Drake’s galleon of the same name—a ship he later rechristened the Golden Hind—some four hundred years earlier. “They do nice lunches,” she said, “and more important, they have a great selection of British beer.”

  Still feeling the effects of all the liquor from the night before, I wasn’t sure how well a large meal was going to sit. But once I stepped inside and smelled that glorious pub food, my stomach and salivary glands informed me that this was indeed the perfect remedy. I was trying to decide between the shepherd’s pie and fish ’n chips when Nichole came to my rescue and suggested we get one of each and share.

  “Oh, and do let’s have pints of Fuller’s London Pride,” she added with a terrible British accent.

  “Bloody brilliant!” I responded in kind.

  ***

  Our plates wiped clean with the last remaining soggy chips, we made a quick trip to the ladies’ loo, as the waitress called it, and then climbed back in the T-Bird. I noticed that, like me, Nichole undid the top button of her jeans as she settled into her seat.

  Searching for the end of her safety belt, which had slipped between the bucket seats, Nichole reached down and came up with a wad of papers and a smashed to-go cup. “Gross. Don’t you ever clean your car?”

  “Those are not mine,” I said, relieving her of the trash, “but Letta could be a bit of a slob.” I climbed back out and, as I crossed the parking lot to the dumpster in the corner, unfolded the slick piece of paper on top of the stack. It was a receipt from a Santa Cruz sporting goods store, and I was about to toss it out with the cup and dirty paper napkins when my eye was caught by the name of the item bought.

  I returned to the car and handed the paper to Nichole. “Check this out.”

  “Pepper spray,” she read.

  “And take a look at the date of purchase: March twenty-ninth, right after Letta got that second threatening letter.”

  “Whoa.”

  “Yeah. I guess she really was scared.” Settling back down into the bucket seat, I turned to face Nichole. “But you know what’s odd? I don’t remember reading about them finding any pepper spray in her bag in the crime scene notes Eric gave me. Wouldn’t you keep it in your purse if you went to the trouble to buy some?”

  “I don’t use a purse,” Nichole said. “But yeah, if I did, that’s where I’d put it.”

  “But then again, this is Letta we’re talking about. She no doubt bought the stuff and then immediately spaced out about it.”

  We both just sat there for a moment, staring out the windshield at a pair of matronly women holding hands and giggling as they negotiated the steps from the pub down to the parking lot.

  “I wonder if it would have made a difference if she’d had it with her,” Nichole said after a bit.

  “That we’ll never know.” Shoving the sales receipt into my jeans pocket, I started the engine.

  Twenty minutes later, we passed through the driftwood-toned vacation homes of Stinson Beach and then saw the beginning of the Bolinas Lagoon stretching out before us. The tide was well out, and flocks of white egrets were pecking about in the glistening mud flats.

  Once past the lagoon, we took a hard left and came back down its other side into the picturesque little community of Bolinas. A surprising number of roads didn’t have street signs, and Nichole squinted at the directions I had scribbled the other day. “Does this say turn right at the white picket fence or turn right after the fence? You have the worst handwriting, girl.”

  I pulled over and snatched the paper from her. “Lemme look. At the fence.” Handing the directions back, I put the car in reverse. We followed the single-lane road for about a half mile and then turned right again at the hand-painted wooden sign for Bolinas Farms, bumping our way up a dirt driveway until we came to a row of large greenhouses.

  “This is where she said to meet.” I switched off the engine as a huge, white dog bounded up, barking ferociously. Unsure whether it was safe to emerge, we remained in the car.

  Almost immediately, however, a woman in a blue long-sleeve T-shirt and brown pants stuffed into black rubber boots emerged from the first greenhouse and called to the dog. “Xena! Come!”

  I recognized her as an older version of the woman in the photo but with gray hair. The dog immediately ceased its barking, ran to Kate’s side, and sat down, panting happily. What a good dog, I thought.

  She took in the car. Of course she would know it as Letta’s, I realized. But she didn’t say anything about it.

  “You must be Sally.” Kate strode forward as I opened the door and stepped gingerly onto the muddy road. Nichole and I shook hands with her, and I told her I was impressed with the dog’s obedience and its prowess as a watchdog.

  “That’s her job. She’s a Great Pyrenees, and they’ve been bred to do that for centuries. I have her mostly to guard a small flock of sheep I keep, but she’s also useful for keeping out intruders of the human variety.” She leaned over to scratch Xena behind the ears and got a slobbery kiss in return. “In reality, though, she’s a big sweetie.”

  We all stood there looking at the dog, and I tried to think of what to say. Nichole sensibly started with the obvious: “So how big is your spread?”

  “It’s small: only seventeen acres. But I grow all my crops pretty intensively, so I manage to get a fair amount of yield. And these new greenhouses help a lot. They extend the growing season to pretty much all year round. I’m certainly not getting rich, but I do okay.” She turned and started up a gravel path. “C’mon, let’s go sit where we can talk.”

  We followed her over to the other side of the greenhouse, where a picnic table sat under a large live oak tree. Xena ran on ahead and lay down in the shade, and we three humans got comfortable around the table, which had a pitcher and three glasses set on it. Kate picked up the pitcher. “You want some sun tea?”

  Nichole and I both accepted the offer, and I immediately drank down half my glass. “How’d you end up in the farming business, anyway?” I asked, wiping away an errant dribble with the back of my hand. “Martine, the pastry chef at Escarole, said you used to be a bartender back in the eighties.”

  “Yeah. That was a bit of a change, eh?” Kate chuckled. “But it isn’t really all that strange. I actually grew up on this farm, right up there.” She pointed to a white Victorian house in the distance that had been hidden by the greenhouses when we drove up. “I didn’t appreciate it at the time, though. I mean, I liked it fine when I was a little kid, but as a teenager, I thought it was really boring living on a farm. And then, when I came out my senior year of high school . . . Well, you can’t imagine, but being a lesbian in Bolinas back in the midsixties, before the poets and hippies moved up here—it wasn’t much fun, I can assure you.”

  Nichole nodded sagely, though I knew damn well she hadn’t even been born till the end of the following decade.r />
  “So I hightailed it down to San Francisco as soon as I finished high school.” Kate lifted her glass, contemplated its contents for a moment, and then absently took a sip.

  “Is that when you met Letta?” I prompted her.

  “That wasn’t till much later. I spent about twenty-five years in the City—first as a student at the city college and then working a bunch of different jobs. I eventually ended up as a bartender. Turns out, that wasn’t such a great idea.” She laughed. “I liked the bar scene a lot. Too much. Anyway, that’s when I met Letta.” Kate set her glass down and turned it slowly in a circle. “I wanted to come to the funeral, you know. But I felt like I couldn’t . . . or shouldn’t . . .” She trailed off, staring at her glass of tea.

  As if on cue, Xena stood up abruptly and shook, the jangle of her chain collar ringing out in the silence that followed this last sentence. The big dog slowly stretched—front legs first, then the back—and trotted over to where Kate was sitting, shoving her great muzzle into the hand dangling over the edge of the table. Kate smiled sadly and obligingly stroked her head.

  “Look,” I said after a minute, “I know I can’t possibly understand all you must be going through right now, but I want you to know that I do get it to some extent ’cause I was close to Letta, too. Or at least I thought I was,” I added, trying to keep my voice steady. “I gotta say it kinda hurts that she kept from me this whole part of her life”—I motioned with my hands to indicate the greenhouses and surrounding hills—“something so very important to her, yet she didn’t trust me with it, and I didn’t find out until too late, until after she was gone.”

  Kate shook her head. “I don’t think she ever told anyone about us. The thought of people knowing terrified her.” She reached over and took my hand. “But she should have told you. She used to talk about you a lot, and I know it would have made her supremely happy to have your blessing.”

  She gave my hand a squeeze and then let go. “I guess you’d like to hear the whole story. That’s why you drove all the way up here, after all. And I’ve got to admit it feels good to finally be able to talk about it.” Kate laid her hands on the table, fingers extended, and studied them. “Okay,” she said and exhaled in a long stream, like a gymnast preparing to mount the parallel bars. “So Letta used to come into the bar where I worked. A women’s bar,” she added with a quick glance at Nichole.