Out of the Frying Pan

by Robin Allen

  Mike might be a salesman, but he’s not slick. He handed me my cup, then brought his coffee up to his lips with a shaky hand. “What money?” The lie is always in the voice, not the words.

  “The money you gave him in the barn.”

  It’s hard to predict how an individual will react when confronted with a very large truth. If Mike ran through the door and into the laundry room, finding him would be a challenge. At that point, though, I would let him escape. I already had enough to take to my interview with Randy. The fact that Mike had essentially denied the existence of money told me that it probably had not been a payoff on a bet. He also didn’t make up a lie about it being a business transaction, which would have been a better deflection. No, this money was the key to something, and if Mike was the type to make assumptions, he thought I witnessed the payoff.

  “It was in a plastic bag with the farm’s logo on it,” I said for an extra dash of authenticity.

  Mike dropped his eyes to the scuffed white floor, then sighed.

  “Tell me, Mike.”

  He sat on top of one of the picnic tables and put his feet on the bench. “Randy’ll ruin me if I tell you. Like seriously ruin me.”

  “He won’t have to know,” I said, unsure if we were still talking about the money or something that carried a long prison sentence.

  “You think so? That’d be great if he didn’t know. I mean, he knows. He’s the one who did it. I just helped. But I didn’t want to.” He searched my eyes. “I swear I didn’t want to.”

  Twenty-One

  I usually have enough time, and once in a while enough patience, to listen to a guy kvetch until he eventually blabs the truth—it was their manager’s idea to use expired ground beef in the Bolognese sauce, or they used the hand-washing sink as a urinal only the one time—but I really didn’t want to listen to Mike flubber over this. If I got a confession out of him, I might could still make the morning yoga class with Daisy.

  He seemed more delicate than the cooks and managers I normally deal with, however, so I softened my approach. “It’s okay, Mike. Whatever it is can be fixed.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head deliberately, looking more like a toddler refusing to share his toys than a muscle-bound bouncer on Sixth Street.

  “I can try to help you if you tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  After a long pause, he said, “We’ve been borrowing money from the fund. Randy has.”

  I quickly put that together to mean, “The Friends of the Farm treasury fund?”

  “Randy’s going to kill me.”

  I tapped the table to get his attention. “Forget Randy and tell me about the money.”

  “Randy’s business was tanking with the election and everything, you know, so he borrowed a couple of thousand from the fund. He said he’d pay it back, but he didn’t. And then he borrowed a couple more.”

  “And he didn’t pay that back either, did he?”

  “I didn’t want to do it!” he cried. “I swear I didn’t want to do it.”

  I believed Mike, but he was still as guilty of embezzlement as Randy. “Were you giving him more money last night?” I asked.

  “No, not that. No. Randy thought he might lose the election, so he was paying it back. He gave me the money when we first got there for the tour, but then he asked for it back before dinner.”

  “After Perry announced that Dana was president? Why?”

  “He said he had a better idea.”

  “Did he tell you what it was?”

  “I didn’t ask him,” he said. “I was just glad Dana was elected and I was finally done with Randy.”

  Not for the first time in my life did I ask the obvious. “Why didn’t you quit, Mike?”

  “I tried, but Randy said he would tell everyone I took the money. I didn’t take the money. Randy did.”

  “I understand,” I said. “Why was the money in one of the farm’s plastic bags?”

  Mike ran his hand over the top of his head. “Randy gave it to me loose, and I couldn’t carry it all, so I put it in a bag I found in the kit-

  chen.”

  Oh. “After you gave him the money, did you and Randy leave the barn together?”

  “Yeah, but he went to put the money in his car.”

  Oh, no he did not! Unless ice chests had become street-legal vehicles. I now had another reason to suspect Randy of killing Dana, but not even the threat of exposing his theft to the Friends would get me an audience with him. I knew someone he would talk to, though.

  I wasn’t so lucky with traffic on the trip down south, and arrived at Markham’s at 11:17 AM. Our family restaurant is closed on Mondays, but Drew was there. I hadn’t lied to Mike when I told him that Drew was assessing all of Markham’s suppliers to make sure we were getting the best product, service, and price. Since Ursula had determined to exceed the food budget while finalizing the recipes for her cookbook, Markham’s had been special ordering items from other vendors, which isn’t cost-effective. Drew had worked extra hours charting all of that on a monster spreadsheet every Monday morning for the past few weeks.

  I drove around to the back expecting to see Drew’s gray truck and only Drew’s gray truck, but I had to park on the street for all the other vehicles—Ursula’s, Trevor’s, Mitch’s, Nina’s, Jamie’s, Daisy’s. Daisy’s? And several others belonging to employees.

  What could everyone be doing? And without me. I turned thirty-nine last month, so they weren’t holding a super-secret surprise party planning meeting. A family council? But why include Jamie, Drew, and Trevor? Perhaps they had finally scheduled an intervention for Ursula’s bad attitude or Mitch’s ongoing love affair with golf or Nina’s snobbery and reckless spending. Regardless of the target or the issue, I had plenty to say and should have been included.

  I put my hand on some of the car hoods on my way to the back door. They still felt warm, so whatever they were doing, they hadn’t been doing it long. I had to use my key to unlock the door, then stepped into the kitchen.

  Someone yelled, “Cut!” Then everyone turned to look at me.

  Jamie and Ursula stood together at the silver prep table, a mess of ingredients in front of them and large bright lights above them. Several cooks wearing radiant white chef’s coats and checked pants manned the stove and grill, wrapped in clouds of steam and enticing smells. The rest of the car owners formed an audience behind two cameramen, each positioned at a tripod near the corners of the table.

  Mindy Collision, dressed in a similar cowgirl getup as the night before, except for the hat, glared at me. “I thought I told everyone to come in through the front door,” she said. Her black hair pulled into a tight ponytail added extra severity to her words.

  “Apologies, Mindy,” Nina said with an obsequious twitter. “She’s not familiar with filming.”

  How would Nina know what I’m familiar with? She doesn’t even know the name of the agency I work for. And how was I supposed to know they were filming? “Next time,” I said.

  Mindy rolled her eyes, then said. “Take five, people.”

  I can’t stand being addressed as “people,” but no one else seemed to mind. Trevor approached Ursula and together they sniffed something in a pot on the stove. Nina produced a hand mirror from her purse and made faces into it, Mitch and several others pulled out cell phones, and the rest began to graze from a tray of cheese and fruit set up near the walk-in.

  Jamie smiled at me, then raised a momentito finger while he spoke with Mindy, who stood by the sink conversing with a girl with a blond pixie haircut and a clipboard in her bent elbow. Mindy’s minion.

  Logan rushed up and hugged me. “TeePee!” she squealed, using the accidental nickname she had christened me with as a two-year-old trying to say Auntie Poppy.

  “Hey, honey, are you helping out today?” She wore a small white chef’s coat and black-and-white
pinstriped pants, a present her father gave her for her fourteenth birthday after she announced that she wanted a career as a professional chef.

  “That lady’s filming Ursula and JJ, and JJ told my mom last night that I could be on the show, but now she won’t let me.” JJ came out of Jamie requesting “just Jamie” the first time Logan called him Mr. Jamie.

  “Your mom won’t let you?” I asked.

  “No, the lady.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. Did she say why?” Logan is quiet and mature, so I knew it wasn’t because she had busted onto the set full of attitude and assumptions. And if that were the deciding factor, Ursula shouldn’t appear on camera either.

  I caught a brief shake of Logan’s head before Daisy came over and hugged me. Like me, she wore all black, but she looked chic and poised, while I looked shabby and practical. “I got your message this morning,” Daisy said. “I meant to call you, but we had to get here early.”

  “And for nothing, it appears,” I said. “Logan said Mindy changed her mind?”

  “When Jamie told us last night, Erik and I went straight home to tell her.” She smoothed Logan’s hair then gave her shoulder a squeeze. “She’s so disappointed.”

  “Jamie should have some say in this,” I said, “being that he’s the star of the show.”

  Daisy said, “He tried to talk to Mindy when she first said no, but she started to get mad so he backed off. He said he’d try again later.”

  “You’re sure she didn’t give a reason?” I asked.

  “No,” Logan said. “JJ said I could be Ursula’s assistant and hand her stuff when she asked for it. We did it twice, then they didn’t want me anymore.”

  I watched Mindy scan her film set like a lightning bolt searching the horizon for a place to land—Ursula measuring out sea salt at the prep table, Jamie now talking to one of the cameramen, the minion tasting a spoonful of something Trevor offered her. Mindy stopped when her eyes landed on me, then she shifted them to Daisy, then to Logan, then to me again. She got that look people get when they realize that my cousin and I look enough alike to be confused for each other.

  I tapped Daisy on the arm. “I think I know why Mindy doesn’t want Logan. She thinks you’re me and Logan is my daughter.”

  “Why does that matter?” Daisy asked.

  “Mindy has designs on Jamie, and Jamie canceled his trip to Europe because of me, and she’s jealous.”

  Daisy smiled. “Jamie didn’t go to Europe because of you?”

  “He said he came back when he learned that Drew and I were dating. Except we’re not dating.”

  “You’re dating,” Daisy said. “How romantic of Jamie!”

  “Yes, very romantic that I have to choose between him and Drew six weeks early.”

  Daisy let out a hard sigh.

  “Okay, yes, it’s romantic. And I’m flattered that he came back for me. Shocked, actually.”

  “Can you do something, TeePee?” Logan asked. “I really want to be on teevee.”

  “I’ll talk to JJ,” I said. “We’ll get it worked out.”

  Logan sprinted up to Jamie then tugged him away from the cameraman and over to me. “Here he is,” Logan said.

  I looked at Daisy, who guided Logan to the snack table.

  Jamie kissed my cheek. “I’m glad to see you,” he said.

  “You, too. Why didn’t anyone tell me y’all were going to film here today?”

  “I tried to this morning, but you interrupted me.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Thank you for getting Logan on the show.”

  Jamie laughed. “She keeps stealing all the scenes.”

  “Is that why High Cotton decided to keep her behind them?”

  Jamie glanced at Mindy. “It’s the weirdest thing. Mindy was really chuffed to present Logan as an up-and-coming young chef, but after a couple of takes, she changed her mind for some reason.”

  “I’ll tell you the reason,” I said, then repeated to him what I had told Daisy.

  “Mindy’s not interested in me,” Jamie said. “She’s my boss.”

  “Since when does that matter? Ursula is Trevor’s boss.”

  “Trust me, she’s not interested,” Jamie said.

  “Do you have another explanation why she suddenly overturned her decision?”

  “Mindy’s a professional. I’m sure she has a good reason.”

  “Can you please find out what it is?” I asked. “Logan is crushed, and I think she would feel better knowing that Mindy thinks she’s too short or too immature or too whatever to hand Ursula a spatula on camera. And if Mindy is too immature herself and doesn’t want whom she thinks is my daughter on the show, well, we would all feel better knowing that.”

  Jamie brought up his hand to run fingers through his curls, but stopped.

  “Keep going,” I said. “I won’t cite Markham’s for improper employee hygiene.”

  “No, Mindy’s concerned about continuity. She wants us to look the same from shot to shot.”

  Mindy, Mindy, Mindy! “Please go talk to your boss about Logan before you start shooting again.”

  As soon as Jamie left, Daisy and Logan returned. “What did he say?” Logan asked.

  “He’s talking to her,” I said.

  We three looked over at what to Logan had to be the most important discussion since her parents debated whether to let her put a pink streak in her hair when she was ten. I admit to feeling a little fluttery myself. To stop us from rubbernecking, I asked Logan to tell me about her latest original recipe, but she was too absorbed in the small drama on the other side of the room to mumble anything other than “Sour cherry tart.”

  A few minutes later, Jamie walked up to us. “She wants to talk to you.”

  “Daisy or Logan?” I asked.

  “You,” Jamie said.

  Twenty-Two

  “Me-ee?” I said. “Why?”

  “She didn’t say,” Jamie said.

  What could Mindy want with me? I wasn’t even supposed to be at Markham’s. And how did a plea for Logan’s guest spot on the show earn me a summons into judge’s chambers? Considering the situation, the best thing I came up with was that Mindy wanted to barter with me—if I give her Jamie, she’ll give Logan her fifteen minutes. “I have nothing to say to her,” I said.

  Logan grabbed my hand. “TeePee! Go talk to her!”

  “Maybe she wants you on the show, too,” Daisy suggested.

  “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!” Logan whined.

  I sighed dramatically. “Only for you, little one.”

  “Yes!”

  I never hurry through a commercial kitchen and I didn’t this time. I stopped to examine the contents of every bowl, tin, and platter between me and the prep table. Nobody said I had to be nice to Mindy, but I was anyway. “Hello, Mindy,” I said when I reached her. “I like your plaid shirt. Do you need anything?”

  “An apology,” she said curtly.

  “From?”

  “You.”

  “For?”

  “Spilling wine on me last night.”

  What! She knew I hadn’t spilled the wine on purpose. And really? That’s why she subpoenaed me? For a stupid apology? “That was an accident,” I said. “Someone bumped my arm.”

  She tried to insert her hands into her front pockets, but her jeans were so new and stiff, she couldn’t make the gesture look nonchalant, so she put them on her hips.

  An apology would essentially be admitting that I soaked her in spirits intentionally. And then what? Would she use that against me with Jamie? Wait … I was being paranoid, and almost as childish as she. I crossed my fingers behind my back and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Her face acquired an expression that could only be described as victorious, then she clapped her hands twice. “Places people!”

  “Lo
gan, too?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Mindy said.

  I turned to my cousins and gave them a thumb’s up. The smile on Logan’s face was worth all that crow I would have to pick out of my teeth.

  “Ursula!” Mindy’s assistant yelled across the kitchen. “Is it time to take the salmon cakes out of the oven?”

  Salmon cakes! That’s what Ursula was making on the show! I whipped my head around and saw Mitch skulking through the swinging doors that led into the wait station. I took off after him and caught up with him in the second dining room.

  “That’s my recipe for salmon cakes,” I said as he unlocked the door to his private office. “Ursula stole it for her cookbook!”

  “It’s the restaurant’s recipe.” His quick response told me that Ursula had already gotten to him.

  “I created it.”

  “You improved on Rolly’s version, who got it from Dana, who got it from your mother.” He went behind his desk and sat on his throne.

  “Well, it’s not fair for Ursula to make the entire world think it’s hers by cooking it on network television.” I knew I sounded like a six-year-old, but it’s hard not to do when I’m emotional about something—especially when my stepsister gets to do whatever she wants all the time.

  “It’s cable television,” Mitch said, “and she’s making her venison stew for the show. The salmon cakes are for the crew.”

  “Oh.”

  Mitch indicated that I should sit. “This is good for us,” he said. “We need people to stop thinking of Markham’s as the place where Évariste Bontecou died.”

  “Ursula wouldn’t even have a cookbook deal if she hadn’t gotten herself arrested for killing him.”

  “Nevertheless, she’s worked very hard. She deserves this.”

  I agreed with Mitch that Ursula had worked hard, but I didn’t necessarily agree that she deserved this notoriety. The decision wasn’t up to me, though, and I accepted the futility of my position.

  “Why weren’t you at our family affair?” I asked. “Nina said you don’t like to drive in the dark.”