Dying for a Taste

by Leslie Karst

  “Yeah, it seems like a great organization. I’ll have to check it out.”

  I watched her make her way toward the front door, saying “hi” to various people along the way. It seemed like she knew just about everyone in the room. Looking around for Eric, I finally spotted him at the other end of the appetizer table. He was still talking to the redhead, pouring her a glass of wine and laughing at something she was saying. I grabbed a plate; loaded it with cheese, roast veggies, and bread rounds; and walked over to join them.

  “Hey, Sal. There you are. This is Rebecca. She makes charcuterie.”

  We shook hands. “Like prosciutto?” I asked.

  “Some. And other kinds of dry-cured ham, too. I also do several pâtés. That one over there is mine: it’s a pork and chicken liver terrine with brandied prunes and juniper berries.”

  I glanced in embarrassment at my plate, which was noticeably lacking in pâté. I’ve never been a big fan of liver. “Sounds delicious,” I lied. “I’ll have to try some.”

  “But mostly I’ve been into sausages lately. I was just telling Eric about a new kind I tried making yesterday: turkey, chanterelle mushrooms, and dried apricots.”

  “Yum,” I said, this time with conviction, and bit into a piece of bread slathered with creamy Red Hawk cheese.

  “Yeah, they came out pretty good, but they were a little too dry. I was thinking the apricots would add more moisture than they did. I’ll have to add a lot more fat if I’m going to start selling them. Did you know that most commercial sausage is between thirty and fifty percent fat?”

  “I guess that explains why I like it so much,” I said, taking another bite of the triple-cream cheese.

  A woman started clinking a wine glass with a fork. As we turned toward the sound, Eric nudged me with his elbow and nodded toward a man standing to our right. On his name tag was printed, in large block letters, “TED.”

  “Dinner’s about to be served,” the glass-clinker announced after the room had quieted down, “so why doesn’t everyone start getting seated.”

  Eric and I watched to see where Ted would sit. He chose a spot next to a woman he appeared to know and set a wine bottle down in front of his seat.

  “What if it’s the wrong Ted?” I whispered to Eric.

  “What’s to lose?” he answered. “It’s not like there’s another Ted we’ve seen here so far.”

  “Right.” We followed Ted to the table; I took the seat to his left, and Eric the one across from me.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ted had immediately turned to strike up a conversation with the woman to his right, so I had a good opportunity to check him out without his noticing. What was immediately clear was that he was not the guy who’d come into Gauguin to harass Letta. The man in the photo she’d taken was younger and with longer and darker hair. Oh well. So much for that theory.

  But even so, Ted’s looks didn’t jibe with the rabid letter writer of my imagination. He was older than I would have expected: fifties, early sixties? It was hard to tell because of his fair hair. It could be natural, but I suspected it was a dye job. And those blond ringlets—could they be for real? In his vintage Hawaiian shirt and with that almost cherubic face, he gave the impression of an ageless surfer dude.

  As I listened in on his conversation, however, I changed my mind: No, not a surfer. He had a sort of smarmy, low-key aggression that reminded me of a sales pitch—more like a real estate agent than a surfer. And he seemed a little tipsy, too.

  He must have felt me staring at him, because he swiveled in his chair at that moment and graced me with a smile full of perfect, white teeth. “Howdy,” he said. “I’m Ted. And you are?” He glanced down at my name tag, and I saw recognition appear in his eyes. He frowned briefly, then quickly smiled again. Nervousness?

  I pretended not to notice. “Oh, hi!” I said, conjuring the most charming smile I could. “I’m Sally, and this is Eric.”

  Eric reached across the table to shake hands with Ted. “Glad to meet you.”

  “So . . .” I tried to think of something to say to put Ted at ease and convince him I had no idea who he was. “You know what’s on the menu tonight? I hope whatever it is, it’s soon, ’cause I’m famished.”

  His shoulders relaxed. “All I know is the main course is braised short ribs. But don’t worry,” he added, “it’s grass-finished beef. The Slow Food folks are pretty good about that sort of stuff.”

  “Ah. Good.” I picked up my glass and drained it. “That should go well with the Cab blends.”

  “Here, try the one I brought.” Ted poured me a taste from the bottle sitting in front of him. I saw Eric squinting to see what it was.

  “Estancia,” I read off the label for his benefit.

  “Yeah, it’s the reserve,” said Ted, “which is a lot better than their regular Meritage.”

  “Nice to see a wine from down in Paso Robles,” Eric chimed in. “Most of the bottles here seem to be from Napa. Or Sonoma. We brought the Storrs BXR. Here, I’ll grab the bottle so you can check it out.”

  Eric got up to retrieve one of our bottles from the wine table. When he returned, his path was blocked by a tray stand set up between the two long tables of diners. Three waiters were distributing bowls of soup, and Eric waited for them to finish and move the folding stand out of his way.

  “What kind of soup is it?” I asked as a bowl was set down in front of me.

  “This is a roasted shiitake mushroom bisque with wild rice and sherry,” the server announced to the table at large.

  I dipped my spoon into the nut-brown soup and blew on it. No reason to burn my mouth on the first taste of the dinner.

  “Here you go.” Eric sat back down and poured Ted a glass of the BXR. “Tell me what you think.”

  Ted swirled his glass and took a drink. “Not bad. It’s from Santa Cruz, huh?”

  “Well, the grapes aren’t actually, but that’s where the winery is.”

  Ted looked like he was going to say something but then didn’t. He started in on his soup instead.

  “So what brings you to a Slow Food dinner?” I asked him. “Do you work with food?”

  “You might say that.” Ted set his spoon down and took another swallow of wine. I noticed that the full glass Eric had poured was already half gone. “I’m sort of between jobs right now, but I’ve been helping out some friends who are experimenting with fermentation.”

  “You mean beer and wine?”

  “More like sauerkraut and kimchi. And miso. It’s amazing what I’ve been learning. Did you know, for example, that more than a thousand species of bacteria have been discovered just in humans—in our stomachs, intestines, and mouths and on our skins? We’re like walking bags of microorganisms. And contrary to what you hear all the time about so-called ‘dangerous bacteria’ all over the place,” he said, making quotation marks in the air with his fingers, “most of them are actually necessary for our survival. We need them to absorb and process the nutrients that we consume, produce our sweat, and combat infections.”

  He leaned forward, and I could see tiny beads of the aforementioned perspiration forming on his upper lip. “It’s a little known fact that Captain Cook made sure to take sauerkraut with him on his trip around the world, and not one of his crew members died of scurvy.”

  “Wow” was all I could muster. I smiled but, at the same time, ever so slightly leaned back in my seat, away from his encroaching figure.

  “And now there’s this ‘war’ on bacteria. Those antibacterial soaps you see advertised on TV and chlorinated water and all the antibiotics they pump into the commercial meat we consume. What people don’t realize is that by killing off bacteria, they’re killing themselves.” He was really excited now, and other diners at the table were starting to turn and look at him. “Did you know it can take four years for the bacteria in your gut to recover from a round of antibiotics your doctor prescribes for an earache?”

  Ted glanced around, seeming to realize that perhaps he was
being a bit too animated. “Anyway,” he continued in a softer voice, “what’s really cool is that by simply eating fermented foods, you can restore the proper balance of bacteria in your body. And they taste amazing. Think of cheese, sourdough bread, chocolate, wine.” He finished off his glass with a flourish and poured another nearly to the brim. “They’re all the product of fermentation. And best of all, fermented foods are really cheap to make. Just take a lowly head of cabbage, add some salt and a few seasonings, and prest-o, change-o: sauerkraut!”

  He had to be the right Ted, I decided—the “Noah” Ted. I could totally see this ranting character as the author of those letters. But now that I had him here before me, drunk and clearly eager to talk, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to make any use of it. What was I going to do? Just come out and ask him if he was the one who killed Letta?

  The servers started clearing our soup bowls and replacing them with the entrée. Ted had been doing so much talking that he had to hurry to finish his soup. As he swiftly spooned up the last of his mushroom bisque, I took the opportunity to glance over at Eric, hoping maybe he could move the conversation to a more helpful subject. He was busy, however, chatting with the man next to him. Based on the little I could hear over the din in the room, the guy was apparently a winemaker. Oh, well, I’d never get Eric’s attention now.

  Ted handed his bowl to a passing waitress and excused himself to go to the restroom. As he got up, a large plate was set before me. On it sat two plump short ribs in a pool of thick, dark sauce, garnished with a scattering of slender chives. Next to the ribs were a few grilled vegetables and a stack of thinly sliced potatoes that resembled a short, round tower.

  After we had all been served, the same waiter who had described the soup gave us a rundown on the entrée: “beef short ribs braised in Bison Imperial Brown Ale,” he announced, “accompanied by grilled fennel and radicchio and potatoes Anna.”

  I dug in. When Ted returned, he offered to pour more wine for me, but I waved him off. I’d already had plenty for the night. Pouring himself another full glass, he too started in on his meal. “So,” he said after swallowing a large mouthful of potato, “I wanted to ask you something. I noticed your name tag: Solari. Any chance you’re related to Letta Solari? The woman who was murdered a few weeks ago? I only ask ’cause she was from Santa Cruz, and you brought a wine from there.”

  I stiffened. I’d of course been hoping my name tag would elicit some sort of reaction, but it was still a bit of a shock to hear him raise the very subject I’d been trying to figure out how to broach. My face must have showed my surprise, which he obviously read as grief.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “I guess you are. I am so sorry to bring it up like that.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire. He knew damn well she was my aunt, since Kate had told him about me. But if he wanted to play this game, I was happy to go along with it.

  “No, it’s okay,” I said. “The question just took me by surprise”—that much was true—“which is stupid, I suppose. Her death was, after all, plastered all over the newspapers. Even up here, I imagine.”

  “Yeah. But that’s not the only reason I ask. I actually knew her pretty well. Years ago, when she lived up here in the Bay Area.”

  My beef-laden fork stopped halfway to my mouth. Now this was news. “Really?” I looked over at Eric to try to catch his eye, but he was fully focused on the winemaker.

  “Uh-huh. I lost touch with her after she left the country. I guess she went off to Tahiti or some such place? But then I heard that she’d moved back to her home town and opened up a restaurant.” He chuckled. “I totally cracked up when I heard what she’d named it. Didn’t she know what a chauvinist pig Paul Gauguin was?”

  I inwardly rolled my eyes at his use of this dated expression. I also noted that he missed a good opportunity there for more of his air quote marks.

  “So what’s going to happen to the restaurant now?” he asked and took a bite of short ribs.

  “She gave it to me.”

  He just nodded while continuing to look at his plate and speared a piece of fennel with his fork. “You going to run it yourself or hire someone?”

  I’d come to hate this question even more than people asking whether they’d caught Letta’s murderer yet. But I knew I was going to have to come to some sort of decision relatively soon, and over the past few days, I’d begun to make the transition from studiously avoiding the subject to obsessing about it almost nonstop.

  The problem is, once you’ve settled into a routine, the idea of any change can be unsettling, even if the routine isn’t exactly the life you’ve dreamed of. Yes, I’d been growing increasingly dissatisfied with my life, managing the front of the house at Solari’s. And yes, if I had any single passion, it was food and cooking. But over the years, I’d learned firsthand working at Solari’s—and from watching my dad and aunt—just how hard a life owning and running a restaurant could be.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I answered Ted after a pause, during which all these thoughts flashed through my mind. But I didn’t want to talk about me right now; I wanted to get the conversation back to him. “So how did you know Letta, anyway? Did you two work together?”

  Ted shook his head. “Nuh-uh,” he answered, mouth full. Cutting another piece of meat, he seemed to think for a moment as he dipped it into the gravy. Then, setting the uneaten fork-full of food back on the plate, he turned to face me. “We were lovers,” he said, looking me in the eye.

  What the—? No way.

  “In fact, she left her girlfriend for me,” he continued, a hint of a swagger in his voice, like he was bragging. Then again, it must have been quite the coup for a guy like him to snag a lesbian. But how could Letta—the sophisticated, confident, woman of the world—have fallen for someone like him, someone so narcissistic, so smug?

  Maybe she wasn’t, in fact, the sophisticate I’d always imagined her to be.

  I wondered if Kate knew about Letta and Ted and then remembered what she’d said in that e-mail to him. Ohmygod. This was obviously the “betrayal” she’d mentioned. Ted must be the guy she’d found Letta in bed with all those years ago.

  I looked around the room for Kate and finally found her at the far end of the other table. She didn’t seem to have noticed that Ted and I were sitting next to each other.

  “So why’d you break up?” I finally managed to ask.

  “Oh, let’s just say we had different perspectives—politically, I guess you’d have to call it.”

  Yeah. I can imagine. And thirty years later you’re still angry enough to write virulent, anonymous letters to her. I wondered if maybe Letta had known all along that he was the one who had sent them.

  “And you haven’t seen her since then? You never stopped by her restaurant or anything like that?”

  I thought I detected a brief pause as Ted’s fork made its way to his mouth, but it could have been purely imagination. “It’s been ages since I’ve been in Santa Cruz,” he said, mouth full. “And no, I never stopped by Gauguin. I’m fairly certain Letta wouldn’t have been all that crazy about seeing me again.”

  Ted chuckled as he scraped up the last of the gravy on his plate. He then licked his knife and fork clean and poured himself yet another glass of wine.

  After the dessert course was served (molten dark chocolate cake with raspberry coulis as the hot lava), Ted lost interest in me and turned once more to talk to the woman to his right. He was really drunk by this time. So much so that I don’t think his neighbor was all that thrilled to have his attention back. After a few minutes, she excused herself to go hang out with some friends at the other table. He too got up and wandered off.

  Eric’s new friend had also vacated his seat—folks were starting to congregate again at the wine table, where coffee urns were now set up—and Eric and I had the table almost to ourselves.

  “How much of that did you hear?” I asked him.

  “Some. Did I hear him say he was Letta’s lover?�
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  “Yep.” I filled Eric in on what I’d learned from Ted. “So how weird is that?” I said when I’d finished. “Him being the guy Letta left Kate for?”

  “No wonder Kate’s so pissed.”

  “Yeah. And not just at Ted, I bet. She must have been totally pissed at Letta, too. I mean, c’mon. Imagine if you were involved with a woman who left you for someone like Ted.”

  “Yuck,” we said in unison and then both laughed.

  But then I frowned. “Pissed enough to actually kill her?”

  “I dunno,” Eric said with a shrug. “But someone did, and I’m guessing whoever it was knew her pretty well. In my experience as DA, folks don’t stab someone that many times unless it’s personal.”

  I swiveled in my chair to look at Ted, who was helping himself from one of the coffee urns. “Speaking of personal,” I said, jabbing my thumb in Ted’s direction, “how weird is it, too, that he’s the one who sent those letters? Someone Letta used to be involved with?”

  “Maybe not so weird.” Eric gave his wine glass a swirl and then drained its contents. “I mean, when you think about it, he must feel that her lack of food ethics, or whatever, is just as much a betrayal as Kate thinks his seducing away Letta . . . is . . . was. Is that even a proper sentence?”

  “I better drive home, toots.” I laughed and reached over to help myself to the lava cake still on Eric’s plate. “But seriously, what a soap opera this all is. With Letta as the central character and everyone else revolving around her. Who knew my aunt had such a dramatic life?”

  Eric stood up. “I’m gonna get some coffee. You want me to bring you a cup?”

  “No, I’ll be there in a sec.” As I finished off Eric’s cake, I pondered just how much Letta had kept from me. Would she have ever confided in me, told me about her secret past, had we gotten the chance to know each other better—had she lived to do so? With an impatient shake of the head, I pushed back my chair. Such morose thoughts did no one any good.