Stapleton had responded by having a beautifully gift-wrapped dead rat messengered over to her office.
Beau Stapleton had a long, greasy gray ponytail hanging down his back, which was only accented by his rapidly retreating hairline. His face was pale and puffy, and a potbelly jutted out over his checked chef’s trousers. It occurred to Gina that he looked exactly like his crème brulee had tasted.
Get over it, she told herself, forcing a warm smile.
Barry had his hand on the shoulder of a petite, round-faced black woman with close-cropped silver hair.
“And of course,” he added, “we’re thrilled to round out our distinguished panel of judges by introducing Antoinette Bailey, of the award-winning Toni’s Country Kitchen in Mountain Brook and Point Clear, Alabama.”
Toni Bailey wore a long cotton print skirt that swirled around her ankles, a simple white peasant blouse, multiple beaded necklaces and bracelets, and huge silver hoop earrings. Her unlined coffee-colored face glowed with goodwill.
“The New York Times has called Toni’s Country Kitchen the true mothership of authentic southern cooking,” Barry went on.
“At least they didn’t call it the grandmother!” Toni quipped, drawing a laugh from everybody on set and momentarily cutting the obvious tension.
“And when we come back,” Barry announced to the camera, “we’ll have our Food Fight contestants in their fifty-thousand-dollar dream kitchen, and I’ll announce the first of their three challenges.”
“And cut,” announced a production assistant standing in the background.
“That’s good, everybody,” Barry said, beaming. “Beautiful. One take. That’s what we like.”
“All right,” the production assistant said. “You’ve got fifteen minutes, and then we want everybody over on the kitchen set.”
“About time,” Tate whispered in her ear. “Reggie, are you ready for a good, old-fashioned butt-kickin’?”
She whirled around. He was standing right behind her. D’John had managed to cover the worst of the scratches and bruises with concealer, but his face had an unnatural orangish glow to it.
She started to comment on it, but thought better. “I’m watching you, Tate Moody,” she said, her eyes narrowed. “I know you’re up to something.”
“Just cookin’,” he assured her. “And may the best man win.”
Chapter 41
Valerie was watching Tate as the judges were introduced, and as soon as Deidre Delaney stepped into camera range, his face went very, very still. Earlier in the day, he’d been unbearably cocky, but once he saw this blonde, his whole demeanor changed. Literally, the wind went out of his sails.
She had to run to catch up with him as he hastened out of the lodge and toward the ballroom.
“What’s up?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm to slow him down.
“Nothing,” he said, his face conveying just the opposite.
“I know better,” she said. “Come on, Tate. I saw your face when Barry introduced Deidre Delaney.”
He sighed. “I know her, okay? And not in a good way.”
“What kind of way do you know her? Not, for God’s sake, in the biblical sense. Right?”
He rubbed his bruised cheek with the back of his hand, smudging his carefully applied makeup.
“We met at the Miami Food and Wine Festival, last year,” he said finally, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. But he needn’t have bothered, because Regina Foxton and her producer were making tracks toward the ballroom and the kitchen. For once, Little Miss Sunshine didn’t look too sunny. She looked, he decided, absolutely murderous.
Not that he was feeling all that cheery himself. Not now.
“How do you know this woman?” Val repeated.
“It was after one of those huge, bloated dinner things,” Tate said reluctantly. “A fund-raiser for some charity I never heard of. They had celebrity chefs at all these different stations throughout this gigantic ballroom in this swanky hotel down on the beach. I was doing conch fritters, and this Delaney broad’s station was next to mine. She was doing some kooky dessert with papayas and guavas and pomegranate syrup. I struck up a polite conversation.”
“You made a pass at her!” Val said, slapping her forehead in disbelief.
“The hell I did,” Tate protested. “We chatted a little bit during the evening. She came over to watch me making the fritters. Said she was interested in my technique.”
“I’ll bet,” Val said.
“She kept touching me while she was talking to me. Man, I hate that when people can’t keep their hands to themselves.”
“Oh, me too,” Val said, rolling her eyes.
“I’m being serious,” Tate said. “Then, I’m breaking down my station, and she wanders over and asks if I want to go get a drink. But I was beat from standing on my feet for four hours frying up fritters for the beautiful people—who, incidentally, treated me like I was some kind of glorified busboy. I politely begged off, told her I was going back to my room to get a shower and hit the rack. Which is what I did. Next thing I know, I’m climbing out of the shower, there’s a knock at my hotel room door, and she’s standing there—wearing nothing but the hotel’s complimentary bathrobe—holding a bottle of Veuve Cliquot.”
“A gorgeous blonde. In a bathrobe. With a four-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne. Are you sure you’re not making this up?”
“I wish I were,” he said.
“And you did what?”
“She caught me off guard. I don’t even like champagne.”
“Don’t whine,” Val said. “It’s not attractive on you.”
“I just stood there, staring at her. Eventually, she says, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ I kinda stammered around, and I guess I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”
“Which was?”
He winced. “‘No, thanks.’ And then I shut the door and locked it. I guess I didn’t handle it too well,” he admitted.
“Ya think?”
Chapter 42
Each Food Fight kitchen was a stainless steel symphony. Side-by-side mirror images, they took up one end of the Rebeccaville plantation’s old ballroom.
Gina trailed her fingertips across the polished countertops. Large wooden cutting boards had been dropped flush with the stainless steel countertop work surfaces. Each station held a commercial-size Viking stove with six burners and a built-in grill. There were double ovens on each side, and separating the workstations was a glass-doored walk-in refrigerator. All the comforts of home—if your home happened to be a state-of-the art commercial kitchen.
Propped at eye level above each stove was a foot-high digital time clock, each set at 6:00. The red LED display light was blinking on and off.
Before Tate Moody could establish a beachhead, Gina quickly chose the station on the right-hand side of the set and began unrolling the case that held her knives.
“Good idea,” Scott said, his lips close to her ears. “Be aggressive from the get-go. Let him know you won’t be pushed around.”
“You’re sure you want to wear that color top?” Deborah asked, fussing with the strap of Gina’s tank top. “I really think red, rather than pink, is your power color.”
“I’m sure,” Gina said firmly.
On the short walk over to the ballroom, Scott and Deborah had peppered her with a barrage of suggestions and questions. Was she sure of the menu she’d dreamed up? Yes, but she might have to make substitutions on the fly. Could she gather ingredients, cook, and style the final dishes in the allotted time period? Absolutely. What did she think Tate Moody had up his sleeve? She had absolutely no idea, but she did have a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
One thing she didn’t share with Scott was her unfortunate history with Beau Stapleton. There was no point in it, she decided. Maybe he’d forgotten all about her.
And maybe, if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its butt every time it hopped around.
>
While the TCC crew fiddled with lights and cameras and boom mikes, D’John flitted back and forth between Gina and Tate, powdering noses, combing hair, and reapplying Tate’s smudged makeup.
“Hey, Reggie,” Tate called over, as D’John was reapplying her lip liner. “Looking pretty good over there. You want me to come over, give you some cooking tips?”
“Bite me,” she said, without moving her lips.
Neither of them dared look over at the panel of judges, who were in a small set off to the side of the kitchen, all of them seated in sleek swivel chairs behind an electric blue console with the Food Fight! logo emblazoned across it.
“What’s with that Beau guy?” D’John asked. “He keeps staring at us. He looks familiar, but I can’t figure out how I know him.”
“Maybe you saw him in one of his restaurants,” she suggested.
“Hmm,” D’John said.
“Is he gay?” she asked.
“He’s giving off mixed signals,” D’John said. “I can’t tell whose team he plays on. But I’ll tell you one thing—he’s definitely a player.”
“One minute,” the floor director called, sending D’John scurrying off set. “Barry, can I have you over here on the kitchen set?”
Barry Adelman strode onto the set. “C’mere, you guys,” he said.
He put one arm around Tate’s shoulder, the other around Gina’s. “Before we start shooting, I just want to say you kids look fantastic. The network is behind this in a major way. Everything is golden. Now, cook your fuckin’ brains out!”
He moved smoothly into place.
“Ready?” the director asked.
“All set,” Barry said.
“Good evening, everybody, I’m Barry Adelman, and welcome to beautiful Eutaw Island, Georgia, and The Cooking Channel’s first ever Food Fight!”
Gina blinked a little in the glare of the camera lights, and then smiled her brightest smile.
Tate glanced over at Deidre Delaney. She caught his look, winked, and licked her lips.
He looked away, groaning inwardly.
“After an extensive talent search across the entire South for the region’s best chef, TCC’s talent scouts narrowed the field to two contestants,” Barry said. “Join me now in welcoming Regina Foxton and Tate Moody!”
Barry extended both hands, and, on cue, Gina and Tate walked over from their respective stoves to join their host–slash–master of ceremonies.
“Are you ready to rumble?” Adelman asked, laughing at his own joke.
“Ready,” Gina said.
“Bring it on,” Tate agreed.
“All right then,” Adelman said. Reaching behind him, he brought out a massive iron dinner bell. “Listen carefully, as I detail the first of your three challenges. You’ll have exactly six hours from starting time, till I ring the dinner bell, which signifies time is up. During that time, you’ll be expected to gather, prepare, style, and plate a southern supper—using only the staples you’ll find in your pantries, and whatever foodstuffs you can gather right here in and around Eutaw Island. Is that understood?”
The two nodded in unison.
“For you viewers at home—Tate and Gina’s task will be especially challenging, because there are no stores and no restaurants on the island. There are also no automobiles and no paved roads. However, each of them has had an opportunity to roam the island and study its amazing bounty of natural resources. Each will have a golf cart for transportation and, on that golf cart, some very basic equipment to help them gather ingredients.”
“A cast net,” Gina prayed silently. “Please let them give me a cast net.”
She glanced over at Tate, who looked supremely, annoyingly confident.
“To your kitchens,” Barry said. A buzzer brayed from somewhere off set, and the next thing she knew, she was sprinting over to her kitchen.
She poked her head inside the glass-doored cooler and surveyed its contents. Milk, cream, eggs, butter. No cheeses, she noted, disappointed. On the wire shelving unit, she found glass jars marked FLOUR, SUGAR, CORNMEAL, GRITS, BAKING SODA, and BAKING POWDER. She found salt, pepper, paprika, red pepper, and half a dozen spices and herbs you would encounter in any halfway well-equipped home kitchen. No seafood seasoning mixes, but that was fine; she could concoct her own, as long as she had salt and red pepper. There were bottles of olive oil, vegetable oil, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and vinegar.
In baskets lined up on the countertop she was relieved to find onions, carrots, celery, and green and red peppers. Another basket held lemons and limes.
Under the counter, she found an empty basket and a small six-pack-size cooler.
She grabbed both and, making a mental list of what she’d need to gather, glanced at the clock on the counter. Five minutes gone. She glanced over at Tate’s kitchen. Empty. He had another head start on her. She ran for the door.
Chapter 43
As promised, a lone golf cart was waiting right outside the door. A plastic milk crate had been bungee-corded to the back. Inside it was a long-handled dip net, a collapsible fishing rod with a child’s plastic Zebco spinning reel, a lethal-looking sheathed knife, a ball of twine, some bottled water, and a can of insect repellent. There was a brown paper sack too. Peering into it, she found a ham sandwich neatly wrapped in waxed paper, an apple, and what appeared to be a couple of homemade oatmeal cookies. Her fingers clutched a scrap of paper. “Good luck, girl!” was penciled in crabbed print. “XO Iris.”
“Thanks, Iris,” Gina said softly. “I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna need it.”
She felt a bead of sweat travel down her spine, dampening the back of her shirt as it moved toward the waist of her jeans. She swung behind the steering wheel and floored the cart’s accelerator.
As she bumped along the cart path away from Rebeccaville, she heard the thrum of cicadas in the high grass, and birds trilling from the tops of the live oaks. Not even ten o’clock, and the sun was already high overhead, promising a scorcher of a day. Gina forced herself to rethink her options. No cast net. There went her shrimp dishes. True, she had a fishing rod—of sorts. But she had nothing for bait. And no boat.
Fine, she thought, just fine. Her mama and daddy had not raised any sissies. She would find a way.
She steered the cart toward the inland side of the island, and followed the crudely painted wooden stakes that acted as the island’s road markers.
She doglegged right onto Burned Church Road, made a quick left onto the first unmarked path after that, and followed the oyster-shell path deeper into a palmetto thicket that seemed to close in on her from either side. The jagged palm fronds scratched her shoulders and arms as she lowered her head and powered on through.
Half a mile in, she glimpsed a stretch of shining water through the gnarled and twisted limbs of a wind-bent grove of oaks.
The oyster path gave out abruptly at a tall stand of sweetgrass. A fire circle—scorched earth surrounded by moss-covered chunks of broken concrete—and a pile of discarded soda and beer cans told her she’d found Runaway Creek.
The smell of the marsh—the deep gray pluff mud redolent of a place where land and sea melted into one oozing expanse of netherworld—rose up to meet her nose.
“That grass look tall, honey,” Iris had told her. “But you look around, you see a lil’ trail goin’ in there. Oyster shells, some boards, like that. My daddy drug all that out there, cuz we din’ have no bateau when I was a kid. Just you follow that, like a lil’ bridge, that’ll take you out to the creek bank.”
She could see the gleam of Iris’s gold-capped front teeth as the old lady smiled knowingly. “That there is my daddy’s honey hole. They’s a deep spot right offa there. You wade out when the tide’s out, catch you some swimps, throw a line, maybe catch you a spot-tail.”
“Spot-tail?”
Iris’s smile widened. “Redfish, girl.”
“All right, Iris,” Gina said aloud. “I’m counting on you.” She uncapped a bottle of water and took a
deep swig. Her watch told her nearly an hour had passed. Her stomach told her she’d been too keyed up to eat breakfast.
She reached around and fetched the brown lunch sack Iris had packed for her, and her fingers closed over the apple.
Gina bit in, savoring the cool green sharpness of the fruit. She finished it off in scant minutes, and considered the carefully gnawed core. Would a fish bite a bit of apple? How about a blue crab? Doubtful.
Then she remembered the ham sandwich. Her daddy had always used chicken necks or stinky fishheads for bait. This time, though, she’d have to rely on something else.
She rolled the legs of her jeans above her knees, and slathered her bare arms, chest, and legs with the insect repellent. Ruefully she looked down at her shoes—gleaming white Tretorns. She’d bought them back in the spring, a lifetime ago, when her career wasn’t in the pits, when she hadn’t paused for a second over spending $250 for a pair of tennis shoes. The pluff would ruin them. Still, she didn’t dare risk going barefoot because the oyster shells would cut her feet to ribbons.
In the milk crate, Gina found a baseball cap with “Food Fight!” embroidered on the bill, and jammed it on her head. She took the knife and cut off a length of string, which she wound around her waist. She carefully put the knife back in its sheath and tucked it in the waistband of her jeans.
When she picked up the Zebco, she discovered a small flat plastic box underneath it. It was a cheap, ineffective tackle box, the kind unknowing Yankee tourists bought at any tourist trap on the southern coast, convinced that with it, they would catch the kind of trophy fish that would be the envy of the folks back home in Buffalo or Bayonne.
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