A Soufflé of Suspicion

by Daryl Wood Gerber

  “I was in the area and dropped by,” Nash said. “He cooled his heels and paid full price, but I’ve never liked him.”

  “Is it possible Willow brought out the worst in him?”

  Nash’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “You mean, like she did in me?”

  I knuckled his arm. “She is a tough negotiator.” On a few occasions when I’d visited the store, I’d seen her be curt to customers. I understood why and cut her some slack. She cared about her artists and wanted them to get top dollar. “Suffice it to say, for someone as gorgeous and polished as she can be in social settings, her business bedside manner could use a little refinement.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “As for Donovan, Chef C adores him, so I’m going to trust her opinion for now. Deal?”

  “Deal. Speaking of which, I heard what happened to her sister. How is she doing?”

  “She’s managing.”

  “What’s this?” Using a fingertip, he twirled the card I’d set down.

  “Donovan’s business card.”

  It was a vertical-style card with a gorgeous picture of French macaron cookies at the top. Beneath the picture, in rows, were Donovan’s name, cell phone number, and the telephone number for the Yountville Cooking School.

  “Why did he give it to you?” Nash asked.

  “I sort of asked him for his alibi on Saturday night.”

  “Sort of?” Nash tipped his head. “Do you think he might be guilty?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Don’t kid a kidder.” He chucked my chin.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “Between you, me, and the lamppost, and you have to swear on your mother’s Bible that you won’t reveal this…”

  He mimed twisting a lock on his mouth.

  “Renee wrote a love letter to Donovan. Tyson found it hidden in the sofa. Donovan claimed he heard about the letter from someone in the neighborhood when he went to check on Camille, which could be true. Or not.”

  Nash whistled. “You’re wondering who hid it.”

  “Renee is my first guess, hoping Camille wouldn’t stumble upon it. But what if Donovan killed Renee and, seeing the note, hid it to throw suspicion on Camille?”

  I pulled my cell phone from my pants pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Nash asked.

  “Calling the cooking school. Donovan says he was there that night. I want to double-check.”

  A female receptionist with a Valley Girl–style inflection answered. I asked her whether Donovan had taught a class Saturday night.

  “Yeah, like, uh-huh,” she said. “He’s, like, the best! The pavlova thing with meringue and fruit and whipped cream was, like, one of the yummiest desserts I’ve ever eaten.” As she spoke, I imagined her twirling her hair and flicking her ankle to and fro. “Every class member was as enthusiastic as I was.”

  “What time did class end?”

  “We all stayed until midnight. Everyone was begging Donovan for tips like, you know, how to pipe meringue and stuff.” She added that she, in particular, had needed more hands-on experience. Piping was difficult to learn. She said she didn’t quite grasp how to keep the meringue toward the tip. Hers was always squishing out the top end and oozing all over her hand. “What a mess.”

  Piping is difficult, I thought, but I would have bet that wasn’t why the bubbly receptionist had asked for extra help. Donovan was dishy.

  “The sheriff asked me this already, FYI,” she said, using texting shorthand.

  I thanked her and ended the call.

  “Is Donovan innocent?” Nash asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Back to square one.”

  Frustration ate at me as I tucked my cell phone away and fingered the stem of my wine glass. Camille was family. And I had to figure out how to clear her name.

  Chapter 6

  On Monday mornings, Chef C and I invariably spent a few hours concocting specialties for the week. We would then invite the staff to taste-test them. Without Camille’s presence, everyone was off-kilter. The sous-chefs, cooks, waitstaff, and even the busboys were asking questions like: When will she be back? Is she okay? How will she cope? I had answers because, right as I was saying good-bye to Nash, my mother called and informed me that the therapist had suggested Camille take some time off. The sheriff’s department hadn’t removed the crime scene tape from her house yet, so Mom and Camille had swung by my mother’s place to fetch Riesling, and she and the dog had accompanied Camille to my cottage. They would stay with her until I returned.

  All I told the staff was that, at present, Camille was sedated and sleeping.

  For the next hour, I threw together the weekly specials menu: brochette d’agneau à la Grecque, which was lamb brochettes with sweet peppers, zucchini, and onions with a Greek citrus sauce of fresh rosemary, orange, lime, and grapefruit juice; pâtés aux fruits de mer, which included bay scallops, prawns, snow peas, and wild mushrooms over egg linguini with a garlic vermouth sauce; porc à l’orange, a sautéed pork tenderloin medallion with an orange sauce; and a very simple grass-fed steak topped with bleu cheese. For the appetizers, we would serve mussels in wine sauce or asparagus with hollandaise sauce. For dessert we’d go simple with profiteroles, which were chilled cream puffs drizzled with warm chocolate sauce. As always, we would offer my specialty dessert—crème brûlèe with vanilla sugar.

  As I jotted the menu on a dry-erase board, Heather sidled up to me.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  I blotted my forehead with a clean napkin. “Sweating bullets. I haven’t had to do the week’s specials by myself in ages.”

  “Maybe you should throw in tuna tartare. The simple one with sesame seeds and wasabi powder.”

  “Good idea.”

  Over the past few months Heather had felt more comfortable offering suggestions. When I’d first hired her, she had been tentative to voice an opinion. After all, she wasn’t a cook. She rarely set foot in her own kitchen. I was pretty sure her husband feasted on salt-free frozen dinners. On the other hand, she was an admitted foodie. She enjoyed dishes with a French Polynesian flavor, like poisson cru, a raw fish marinated in lime juice and soaked in coconut milk.

  I scribbled the tuna tartare suggestion on the board with the other appetizers.

  “You know, maybe Chef should see a hypnotherapist,” Heather said. Her non sequiturs never surprised me. She could change subjects quicker than a politician.

  “The guy you work for?” I asked.

  On Heather’s days off, when she wasn’t typing her husband’s latest novel—he wrote everything on a legal pad; he hated computers—Heather put in hours at a hypnotherapist’s office in Calistoga. She said she admired him and enjoyed drinking in his insightful nature. Call me cynical, but I believed the guy had planted the initial belief that Glonkirks had abducted her.

  “He’s brilliant,” she gushed. If I didn’t know how much she adored her husband, I’d have said she had a crush on the guy. “Maybe he could even get Camille to remember more about what happened.”

  “Camille knows what happened,” I said. “She came home and found her sister dead.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Maybe she knows who did it, you know”—she twirled a finger by her head—“psychically.”

  “ESP?” I chuckled. “Honestly?”

  “Don’t you believe in ESP?”

  “Let’s table that discussion for now. We’ve got to get a move on.” I brandished a spatula like Chef C would. “Pair some wines with this menu. The Nouvelle Vie Vineyards Chardonnay will go well with the seafood appetizer.”

  “You’re biased because Nash hawks it. Oh, ha-ha.” She choked back a laugh. “I made a joke. Nash’s last name is Hawke.”

  “You’re a hoot. Just do it.”

  She grinned and saluted.

  “Stefan,” I called. He was standing at the stove filling industrial-sized pots on the burners with water. “The menu is ready. I’ll make two entrées and you make the o
ther two. Then let’s meet in the dining room. Skip the desserts and appetizers. We’re pressed for time.”

  “On it,” he said and spun to his right, running smack dab into Yukiko, a petite Asian cook who’d come to us after quitting her job at a restaurant in Japantown, an enclave of San Francisco. In a high-end restaurant, the cooks—we had three—did the bidding of the executive chef and sous-chef.

  “Out of my way,” she said. Usually Yukiko had the most endearing smile and was quick to tell a story about her ancestors. Not now. She was gritting her teeth tightly. Her coal-black eyes were smoldering.

  “Out of my way,” Stefan retorted.

  “Now children!” I shouted like Chef C would have. “Play nice.”

  Both apologized to the other and yelled, “Sorry,” to me.

  Without Camille, things were getting heated in the kitchen. Due to Renee’s murder and the furious activity at the inn for the festival, everyone was on tenterhooks.

  As I was fetching the lamb and pork from the refrigerator, Jo scuttled into the kitchen. “Mimi, I’m here and ready to help.”

  “How did you know I needed it?”

  “Your mother called me and told me to hurry over.”

  “But you can’t cook.”

  “I can taste-test and give my two cents, and I’m pretty good at peeling potatoes and veggies, not to mention I’ve got a good shoulder to cry on in a pinch.”

  “You’ll get dirty,” I said. “I don’t want to mess up your dress.” She was wearing a raspberry-red scoop-neck dress.

  “This old thing?”

  “Old as in brand-new?” I quipped. “I’ve never seen it.” I set a selection of lamb and pork on the counter, unwrapped it, and set the pieces on platters. “I would remember it with all those details.”

  She plucked the flounce to freshen it and centered the thin black belt.

  “It looks great on you,” I said. “Did you just buy it?”

  “Yes.” She fetched a chef’s jacket from the closet at the rear of the kitchen and donned it over her outfit.

  “To impress Tyson?”

  “No. I bought it for me. I needed a pick-me-up. As for Tyson”—Jo marched to me, her nose wrinkled with distaste—“we’re not talking about him today.”

  “Uh-oh, what did he do? Did he get mad when you told him you thought Allie might be a suspect? Did he think you were butting into his case?”

  “No, he took that in stride. He said she was already on his radar.”

  Hooray, I thought. Apparently a whole slew of people were on his radar, including Donovan.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  Jo lifted a potato peeler from a drawer and wielded it like a sword. “He wants to settle down.”

  I gasped. “He asked you to marry him?”

  “Not exactly.”

  I titled my head. “Either he did or he didn’t.”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Then what’s your problem?” I edged around her and fetched a knife to trim the fat from the meat. “What did he say? Be specific.”

  “You know him. He sort of hemmed and hawed.”

  Around anyone else, Tyson Daly was forthright. Around my pal, he could be as shy as a wallflower. He loved her so much that he wanted to defer to her wishes at all times. Maybe he was the one who needed to visit Heather’s hypnotherapist.

  “He was talking long-term, though,” Jo went on. “He chattered about expanding the house he just bought and fixing up rooms for future children.” She threw me a sour look. “You know me and kids. I never even babysat growing up. I don’t think kids like me.”

  I laughed out loud. “How would you know if you haven’t tried? And it’s not like once you get married you jump right in and start a family.”

  “Yes, it is. You and I are the same age and our biological clocks are ticking.” She made tick-tock sounds with her tongue.

  “Speak for yourself.” I pushed the lamb aside and started in on the pork tenderloin, trimming the fat and silver skin away. Next, I cut it into twelve inch-thick slices. After that, I whipped up a bowl of flour and spices that I would use to dredge the meat. I heated a skillet and added a couple of tablespoons of safflower oil and quick-fried the slices. They sizzled and spit.

  “I want a long courtship. Lo-o-ong.” Jo selected a cucumber from a pile at the cooks’ station and perched on a stool nearby. “Want this peeled?”

  “Sure.” I would use it to adorn appetizer portions of tuna tartare. “You’ll have to be honest with Tyson.”

  “I am. I have been. He doesn’t listen. He—”

  “Whoa, Nellie!” Stefan shouted.

  I swung around and gasped. Water and white foam were boiling over the two industrial-sized pots on the stove.

  Without taking the time to don mitts, Stefan tried to move the pots off the burners. “Ow, ow! Dumb, dumb, dumb. I forgot to set a timer.”

  Yukiko threw him a pair of mitts. He put them on, shimmied the pots to safety, and ratcheted down the heat. A busboy swooped in with a mop and started to swab the floor. Another helper tossed microfiber cloths to Stefan.

  Heather hurried into the kitchen. “What’s going on?”

  I said, “Everyone’s on edge without Camille. We all want resolution. We want her sister’s killer brought to justice, and we want her to find her smile again. Most of all, we want calm. A kitchen requires calm.”

  Jo said, “I’m sorry Yves couldn’t help out longer. How about hiring a temporary chef?”

  I shook my head. “What if whoever we choose is bad? What might that do to the reputation of the bistro?”

  “What will happen if you don’t? War might break out.” Jo grinned.

  “Then I’d better become a general and delegate. Yukiko, take over this entrée.” I ceded my position.

  “Yes, Chef.”

  I handed Heather and Jo clean towels and moved to Stefan to help him reorganize his area.

  Heather followed me. “I heard Allie O’Malley was a chef before.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Jo trailed her. “For all we know, she killed Renee.”

  Heather’s eyes widened. “Really? What’s her motive?”

  “Money,” Jo said.

  “They argued about a contract.” I wiped down spoons and sauté pans that were wet from the boiling water.

  “O-o-oh,” Heather dragged out the word. “Follow the money.”

  I replayed the confrontation between them in my mind. Allie had begged Renee to cede control of the festival. Did she believe that she might regain ownership if Renee was dead? She had been at the bistro when Renee left that night. She’d paid quickly and split. Had she followed Renee to Camille’s house, barged in, and clobbered her with the countertop mixer? Though she had been the first suspect to come to mind, I didn’t sense Allie was evil at her core. However, as history had proven, I wasn’t an expert at determining a person’s character. I thought of their last exchange again: Renee had said, “See you soon”; Allie had responded, “Not if I can help it.”

  “Knock-knock,” a woman said from the entrance to the kitchen. “Am I interrupting?”

  Nash’s ex-wife Willow strutted toward us. I could have sworn she’d been a siren in a prior life. Not only did she look incredible, with her flowing red hair and her shapely body wrapped in an apple-red dress, but she also came across as the warmest, most alluring human being on the planet. Anyone who met her instantly wanted to be her best friend, including me—that is, until I’d learned she was Nash’s wife, at the time.

  “Jorianne, I was hoping I’d find you here.” Willow had a melodious voice. “I’m almost finished setting up.”

  “Setting up what?” I whispered to Jo.

  “I forgot to tell you,” she said. “Willow asked if she could place a display from her store at the inn. She thought festival people might want to invest in arty plates and baskets for the sweets they purchase. She said she’ll donate ten percent of her proceeds to the educational fund, too.”

  “It�
��s a very good cause,” Willow said, moving farther into the kitchen. “I know how much I’ve valued my education.” She and Nash had gone to UC Davis together. She for art, he initially to become a veterinarian. “Come with me, Mimi.” She beckoned me with a finger. “I want you to meet somebody.”

  “I can’t. We’re taste-testing the week’s menu soon.”

  “Please.”

  Knowing she wouldn’t relent—like a siren, she always got her way—and knowing I needed a breather from the chaos if I wanted to serve up a good lunch, I asked Stefan to take command, instructed Heather, Jo, and the rest of the staff to obey him, and allowed Willow to steer me through the dining room, across the parking lot, and up the front path to Maison Rousseau.

  “You’ll be so surprised to see what we’ve done,” she said. “It’s a gem of a store.”

  A thickset couple wearing colorful T-shirts approached us and waved. “Hello, Mimi! We’re off to see a crush!” they said in unison.

  “Have fun,” I said. “Did you secure a tour like I told you?” They had come into town a month ago and dined at Bistro Rousseau.

  “You bet.” The woman’s voice was as jolly as her apple-cheeked face. “We’re going to Frog’s Leap Vineyards.”

  “That’ll be fun. It’s an old frog farm, you know.”

  The man said, “I wanted to do the Cakebread Cellars tour.”

  “That’s a good one, too,” I said. “It’s one of my favorites. They’re all done in small groups so you won’t get caught in the crush of people during the, um, crush.”

  “Told you.” He poked his companion.

  “We purchased wine passes,” she said.

  “Terrific. It’s such a good deal,” I said. Many wineries honored the pass and offered couples two-for-one prices—a big savings. “Do you have a driver?”

  “You bet,” the man said. “We’re not stupid.”

  “Well, I’m not”—the woman motioned to her T-shirt, which read I’M WITH STUPID with an arrow pointing left—“but he might be.”

  “Yo-o-u.” He locked his arm around her neck, gave her a noogie with his knuckles, and prodded her down the path to where their driver in a Lincoln Town Car awaited.