by Alan Russell
“You’re coming with me,” Am said.
Roger looked apprehensive. Self-preservation, and the proximity of those interesting registration cards on Am’s desk, were double incentives for him to try to beg off. “I think the desk is going to be busy, Am. Maybe you ought to call someone from security, someone official.”
“Consider yourself deputized. Now you’re official.”
While Roger mumbled and dissembled, Am called over to sales and catering and asked which group was gathered in the Montezuma Room. Usually only the largest of events were held there. It was a stand-alone hall often touted as the Hotel convention center.
“I should have remembered,” said Am, getting an answer to his question. “Thanks.”
Am gave Roger a look. A fire this wasn’t. “Dessert Festival,” he said. “Sampling’s set to begin this afternoon. Let’s go.”
The Dessert Festival was an annual event that featured the confectionary talents of San Diego’s chefs, with the proceeds benefitting charity. Every year dozens of restaurants and hotels, and chefs and kitchens, contributed to the extravaganza.
“I think the caller was a chef,” said Roger, his memory suddenly clearing up as they walked. “He had the voice of one, at least. I hope he’s not carrying a butcher knife. Marcel scares me when he’s waving his butcher knife.”
Marcel was scary enough without a butcher knife, thought Am. But he didn’t say anything. Though still an eighth of a mile from the Montezuma Room, Am was already being seduced. He could smell cinnamon rolls and apple tarts. Gracious winds deposited the delectable aromas of fudge and brownies. And there were other, even better, smells. His nose was bonding with olfactory wonders never before scented but instinctually welcomed. Brothers! Sisters! Where have you been all my life?
The Dessert Festival didn’t short-change any senses. The meeting room doors were open, and if what was waiting wasn’t the Promised Land, it was at least Candyland. Stepping into the room, Am felt like Dorothy going from black-and-white Kansas into Technicolor Oz. The Montezuma Room had been transformed into a huge candy store for kids of all ages. The entryway was lined with chocolate statues, jelly-bean edifices, and gingerbread houses. There were tortes, cakes, pies, cookies, and candies. The ice carvings looked like giant candy canes. Willy Wonka would have been proud, even if his representatives were not.
The chefs were all wearing their white hats, but they didn’t look much like good guys. This is what the West has come to, Am thought. No more cowboys in white hats, just chefs. There were seven of them, and they stood like Kurosawa’s seven samurai; their spokesman was the heaviest in the lot. There are still those who believe you can’t trust the food of a thin chef. Fortunately, this one wasn’t French. He resembled an older Pillsbury Dough Boy, was white, pasty, and rounded, and his yeast was rising.
“We’re very upset,” he said. “Look—” He swept his arms around. “Look at all that’s missing.”
In the sea of desserts, Am hadn’t noticed the bare patches. But a casual look revealed that some Goldilocks had liberally sampled more than porridge.
“Most of us have worked all night,” the chef said. “Thousands of people will be coming this afternoon to witness this showcase and sample our creations.”
Am didn’t bother to mention the obvious—that some sampling had started a bit early.
“The media will be here. But now we’re missing a good many of our designer desserts.”
Designer desserts. The next thing you know, thought Am, pastry chefs will be signing their bon-bons. “What exactly is missing?” he asked.
“Between eight hundred and a thousand desserts.”
Am took a little stroll. All of the confections were identified by small signs. There didn’t appear to be a pattern as to what was missing; all areas showed signs of having been raided. There were bare patches in the creamy fondants, almond paste and marzipan, peanut-brittle creams, truffle pecan squares, maple charlottes (what are those? Am thought), chocolate divinity, penuche clusters, candied kumquats, bittersweet mousse (what was the plural—mice?) with Häagen-Dazs liqueur, macaroon raspberry bombe, baklava, and caramel parfait. The thirty-nine varieties of cakes (the chocolate decadence looked particularly tempting) and twenty-six different kinds of pies had all been sampled, just as the cookie jars had been raided and the dozen cheesecakes tested. One variety had proved particularly popular: margarita cheesecake. Only one piece was left. Am picked up the survivor.
“Margarita cheesecake,” he said. “Never heard of it.”
He looked at it longingly. He hadn’t yet eaten breakfast, and judging by the denuded section, it did come recommended.
“Oh, go ahead,” said the Pillsbury Dough Boy, sounding more irritable than charitable.
At first bite, Am knew why the dessert had gone over so well. “Delicious,” he said. His second bite he announced as “Heaven.” Am’s third pronouncement was “Sublime.” And then, to his disappointment, there wasn’t any left. That motivated him. There was the chance that if he caught the thieves quickly, they would still be holding some of the cheesecake and he might wangle another piece.
Am asked for the chefs to assign a dollar figure to their loss, and after a small consultation they settled on three thousand dollars. He inquired when the desserts had disappeared and was told they could have been taken only between ten and eleven o’clock, the time when they were all at breakfast.
“Worked all night,” the big chef said, “and set up all morning, and then this happened.”
“And you just left everything here and went to breakfast?”
“What were we supposed to do, take ten thousand desserts with us? We closed the doors, of course.”
Which meant that only half the Hotel would have been subject to aromatic seduction. All eyes were on Am. He wished he had a magnifying glass, or a deerstalker cap, or a tic, something odd and eccentric to convince the circle of doubters that a qualified sleuth was at hand. He couldn’t think of any other questions, so he pretended to take a great interest in all the spots where the desserts had been lifted. If so many eyes hadn’t been on him, he probably would have sampled several more desserts. Walking up and down the aisles, he stopped every so often to imitate the same kind of poses people affect when confronted with modern art. Then he tried a different perspective, got down on his knees, and peered around. A marine white glove test followed. There were papers and crumbs on the floor.
“Were these papers here when you left for breakfast?” Am asked.
The fat chef again consulted the other white hats. Then, together, they all shook their heads. They looked like a religious order, their habits bobbing, the brethren of licked spoons.
Am checked the waste-baskets in the room. It was customary for the banquet crews to completely empty the trash whenever breaking down a meeting room. Most of the containers were half-full, filled with foils, papers, doilies, and napkins. Am pulled some samples out of the trash and examined them. Fresh.
“Your creations aren’t missing,” he announced. “They’ve been consumed.”
The chefs regarded Am and his announcement as they would someone who had caused their soufflé to fall. “Look,” he said, “I am very sorry, and apologize on behalf of the Hotel California. I intend to find out which individuals did this. But while I’m doing that, I suggest you rearrange the desserts so that the bare areas don’t look like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. If you think additional desserts are in order, I’ll put an SOS out to our kitchen and have them whip some out.”
The Dough Boy became the sour-dough boy. “We have emphasized quality in our creations,” he said, “not quantity. And besides, the show starts in less than two hours.”
“Then we had all better get busy,” Am said.
Roger, who had remained mute around the chefs, found his tongue outside the room. “Probably just some vagrants who walked in,” he said, “some beach people who sniffed out a free chow line.”
He sounded hopeful. It was a favorite tactic
of his to blame anonymous sorts. Am always suspected he did that not for lack of imagination, but to avoid any possible confrontations.
“A thousand desserts?” said Am. “Not likely.”
“Employees?”
His second favorite target. “Possible, but I wouldn’t bet on it. At least two hundred employees would have had to have a Twinkies attack at the same time.”
“What, then?” asked Roger.
“A pack,” Am said. “A hungry pack. We need to find our Marie Antoinette.”
“What?”
“‘Let them eat cake,’” he quoted. “In this case, they did.”
The thrill of the hunt didn’t infect Roger/Casper. “Well, now that it’s in your able hands, Am . . . ”
Am shook his head and motioned for Roger to follow.
“Where are we going?” Casper asked miserably.
“First stop,” said Am, “sales and catering.”
There, Am was sure, they’d find answers to the cream-puff caper. The trail of crumbs was already in place, and they had but to find where it led. At least in theory. Along the route Am paused several times, testing the wind and his sense of smell. He sniffed mightily, but he didn’t have to. Pavlov’s dogs wouldn’t have needed a bell to start their salivating. With this kind of scent, they’d probably look rabid. The call of the desserts was strong. There were four other meeting rooms in the near proximity of the Montezuma Room. Usually neighbors see something. In this case they would certainly have smelled something. A noseful of temptation had drifted down the path, and it wasn’t honey bees that had been drawn to the scent and the scene.
Kim Yamamoto greeted Am and Roger with a tired smile. She was in the middle of a desk of contracts, probably trying to make sure no other Bob Johnson fiascoes were imminent.
“If you’re not too busy, Kim,” Am said, “I’d like a rundown on what groups are meeting this morning in the Sea Horse Hall, the Spinnaker Room, the Starfish Room, and the Sextant Room.”
Kim didn’t refer to her notes, could have probably named what was going on in all fourteen of the meeting rooms if put to the test.
“In the Sea Horse Hall is the Starving Artists Sale. The Spinnaker Room has the La Jolla Republican Women’s brunch, and in the Starfish is Trend-three. The Sextant Room has some Procter and Gamble executives.”
The starving artists, despite the nomenclature, were not Am’s first choice for suspects. The group booked twice a year and advertised paintings for as low as $49, worth almost every penny. It was amazing how much bad art they sold. As for the so-called starving artists, most of them churned out about twenty-five masterpieces a day and made quite a good living.
Am asked for the prospectuses on the groups and ran down their vital statistics. His first hunch, he thought, was wrong. His primary suspects had been the Republican Women, suspicions based on Teapot Dome, Watergate, Trump and Russia, and a liberal upbringing. But there were only eighty women attending the brunch, not enough to make away with upward of a thousand desserts.
The numbers were there for the Procter & Gamble execs, but his gut feeling was that they weren’t involved in the crime: Fortune 500 types usually didn’t commit hijinks without sufficient highballs, and it was too early in the morning for those.
That left Trend-3, whatever that was. According to their prospectus, there were approximately two hundred participants.
“What’s the story on Trend-three?” he asked.
‘“Three phases to a new you,’” quoted Kim. “They work on mind, body, and soul.”
The body part interested Am. “Special diet?” he asked.
“Starvation diet,” she said. “They monitor everybody’s caloric intake.”
Bingo. “May I look at their file?” he asked.
Trend-3 could just as well have been called Trend-y. There were a lot of New Age buzz words in their brochure. The workshop was aimed at facilitating “a self-actualizing experience”: a revitalization of spirit, weight loss, and personal epiphany. Am had seen that troika of promised change bandied about before, what he referred to as happiness, thinness, and godness. Devout mendicants need not apply. Operations like Trend-3 never priced their holy trinity cheap.
Several gurus of the whole-grain set were running the program, had incorporated the Hotel’s spa into their own regimen, but the Trend-3 approach sounded a bit mixed-up: alternate pampering with spanking. Body wraps, mud baths, pore (not to be confused with poor) therapy, acupuncture, haiku, and massage were offset by strenuous exercise, ice baths, Rolfing, and colonic irrigations. The only thing consistent was their diet, or lack of one. Carrot juice, salads a rabbit might declare scanty, and blanched rice were the meal offerings of the day. This was the third day of their four-night, three-day gathering. The joys of fasting, meditation, and physical therapy might have sounded good in a brochure, but Am suspected by this time the participants would have viewed the Golden Arches as the pearly gates. He had his culprits, all of them.
Roger/Casper again tried to wriggle out of deputy duty, but Am wouldn’t let him disappear. The aromatic offerings of the Montezuma Room were easily discernible around the Starfish Room, lingering like the breath of Satan. Am pushed open the doors to the meeting room, motioned with his arm until Roger preceded him, then walked inside. The group leader was in the front of the room, pretzeled on a mat in the lotus position. Her disciples were trying to imitate her serenity and her pose. She had long braided hair, gave the appearance of being a graying flower child. Her eyes were closed. Either her concentration was complete or she was good at ignoring the worldly. She was leading the class in some sort of breathing exercises, but they had stopped their breathing. As surely and quickly as cops are made on the mean streets, the participants, the majority of whom appeared to be aristocratic women, had made Am for the hotel dick.
Like a cop looking out on a barroom of hard cases, Am moved his eyes around the room. Some of those who were gathered blushed, and others looked away, but maybe half were bold enough to give him the “cat who ate the canary” look. They weren’t about to repent now. They knew what he was there for and didn’t have an ounce, let alone a few pounds, of guilt in them.
Madame Sominex finally acknowledged Am and Roger. She acted as though her vibrations had been disturbed, shook her head before opening her eyes and looking in their direction, then closed them again for a long moment, as if trying to dismiss a mirage. No such luck.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“I’m Am Caulfield,” he said, “the assistant general manager of the Hotel. I was hoping I could speak with you.”
Her nod managed to involve every vertebra in her neck and could have been timed with the little hand of a clock.
“Continue your breathing,” she told the class. “Search for that place in your being that is the sun, and warmth, and lightness, a place that cannot be touched. Find where nothing can intrude, where all is safe and whole unto itself.”
She was limber, able to rise from a position that would have bought most an appointment with a chiropractor.
“I think it would be better if we talked outside,” Am said.
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t argue, acceded to his wish, but at her unhurried pace. Am held the door for what seemed an eternity, and finally she passed through it.
“This is Roger,” said Am, trying to get him to emerge from behind his back.
“Call me Sabrina,” she said.
“Sabrina,” Am said, “have you been in charge of the Trend-three gathering this morning?”
“I have.”
“Including the times between ten and eleven?”
“I was. We were rebirthing then.”
“You were with your class the entire time?”
“I was.”
That surprised Am. Unless her wards had astral-projected into the hall of desserts, he would have to find another group of culprits. Maybe his initial hunch was right, and the Republican Women were involved. Or the Bob Johnsons. Why hadn’t he thoug
ht of them?
“That is, I was there in body for most of that time, and there in spirit for the rest.”
“What do you mean?”
“I physically absented myself so as to not present a barrier to the participants and their pursuit of their personal Vision Quest. And I had to go and get a CD with the morning music.”
“A compact disc?”
“Las Vissen’s ‘Ocean Serenades.’ Do you know it?”
Am shook his head.
“It’s a marvelous piece. We were making breakthroughs, and I sensed that ‘Ocean Serenades’ would help us even more, would be just the inspirational music to inspire everyone.”
“So you were gone . . . ?”
“Perhaps twenty minutes. But I left them with good thoughts, and Berlioz. His ‘Symphony Fantastique.’”
Subtitled, no doubt, “Desserts Extraordinaire.” It must have been a feeding frenzy, Am thought, everyone snapping at desserts like sharks in blood-filled waters.
“I would imagine you noticed the . . . the aromas this morning?”
“Call me Sabrina” didn’t understand what Am was asking. He sniffed for emphasis. “The wafting scents,” he continued, “from all of the desserts?”
“Yes,” she remembered. “It was a good example for us. I called upon everyone to go beyond that instant of enticement, to reach into themselves for what was truly significant, to draw upon their essence and remember the smells of spring, and pine cones, and flowers, and baby’s hair. I showed them how the realm of the physical could not compare with where they could go and where they had been.”
“They need a remedial course,” Am said flatly.
“I don’t understand.”
“While you were out, your class consumed three thousand dollars’ worth of desserts.”
