Mumbo Gumbo

by Jerrilyn Farmer

  “Did you want to see me, Fate? Or were you just at the studio early and thought you’d use Tim’s empty office?”

  Fate arched an almost completely plucked brow. Whatever coloring that brow had originally been blessed with was now a faint memory. A narrow line of dark-blond pencil marked the spot. “We need to talk, sweetie. I need an ally and you’re it.”

  “That’s intriguing.”

  “Good. This is personal, so I don’t want anything I’m about to tell you to get around. Not even a scent. Do you understand me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I know you’re one of Greta’s little friends, but I particularly don’t want Greta to get any of this information. Am I clear?”

  “Yes.”

  “If she does find out, I’ll know it came from you. And then, Madeline, you can kiss good-bye any chance of working in television again.”

  I was amazed. They really do say that. How quaint.

  “Well, come on,” I said, remembering how tough I needed to be. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t tell me anything at all, Fate. I’m not breaking into your office at seven-thirty in the morning to have a nice private chat.”

  “True,” she said, smiling her smile. “Well, here’s the nasty little business. My husband is having an affair with someone at work. I’m not stupid. I know. And I will kill whoever she is. Make no mistake.”

  “Fate, hold on.” There was no way I wanted to be hearing this. No way.

  “You are about the only one who is safe, Madeline. Howie has been carrying on for at least a month. You’ve only been here a week. Do the math.”

  I hate that phrase.

  Fate stared at me, expecting me to react to her bombshell of a news flash, but I guess I wasn’t fast enough. She said, “Well? You’re certainly not shocked. Is it that easy to see why Howie would make a fool of me?” Tears literally sprang into Fate’s green eyes.

  “Fate, I hardly know you and Chef Howie. Actually, I don’t know you and Chef Howie. I mean, I’m sorry for you if it’s true. But why are you telling me this?”

  “Not to get your pity, doll,” she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue she grabbed off the desk. “I just have to find out who he’s sleeping with. I have to.”

  “You don’t know for sure, then,” I said. “Maybe…”

  “Maybe dogs sing and pigs fly,” Fate said bitterly. “I know. I know. How can I tell? Well, he’s much happier, for one thing. All of a sudden he got happy.”

  Ah, that’s a problem all right. When the husband gets happy, that’s definitely something to worry about. This was the sort of thing that could make a girl glad she wasn’t married. Fate kept her unhappy eyes on me. She needed some reassurance, perhaps. “Maybe he’s just happy about something else. Like he’s enjoying how popular Freak has become. His star is rising.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, miserably. “Right. He’s a star. And who made him a star? That would be me. I’m such a damned fool, Madeline. I worked and worked to make Chef Howie a household name. Did I tell you we just signed a huge deal with Target for a line of Chef Howie kitchen cleanser? And now he’ll leave me and what have I got left?”

  Ten percent of the cleanser money? I couldn’t, of course, say that aloud. Instead I tried to seem interested in her anxiety. “You must have more evidence than Chef Howie’s recent joie de vivre,” I said. “You’re too hardheaded to make all this up over a mood swing.”

  “He’s been lying,” she admitted. “I’ve caught him a dozen times. What kind of idiot does he think I am? He knows he is an atrocious liar. I always find out.”

  “What sort of lies?”

  Her voice got much softer. “He went away for the weekend. To Santa Barbara. He was going to visit some friends, a chef who just opened a restaurant in Montecito. He knew I couldn’t go because I had already told him I had to fly to New York with Arthur for the network affiliates meeting. When I tried to reach him at the hotel in Santa Barbara, he was never in. They took messages. And then he’d call me back ten minutes later.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I called him seventeen times, Madeline. Seventeen messages were taken by the desk clerk. Seventeen times Howie returned my call within ten minutes. Don’t you get it? He had paid the hotel desk to hold all his calls. He didn’t want to be interrupted while he was catting around in some fabulous hotel suite with his…” Tears sprang into her eyes once more, and as she dabbed at them, she calmed her voice down. “…with his mistress. I don’t think I can stand this.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. I wasn’t sure what was going on between Howie and Fate, but she was probably right.

  “The thing is, I want to find out exactly who the little bitch is and I want her head on a platter. I am still the executive producer of this show and Howie is bound to his contract for seven years. Until he comes to his senses and crawls back to me, I will be damned if I will allow his little concubine to work in these offices.”

  “Who do you think it is?”

  “Susan Anderson.”

  “What?” I was shocked. “Susan doesn’t seem like—”

  “Like what?” Fate interrupted, her eyes angry. “She’s a woman, isn’t she? She’s so sweet and self-effacing I could kill her. What’s with those bizarre T-shirts she wears? And those dogs! She has never worn lipstick in all the days I’ve known her. She’s just all wrong.”

  “Well, I think she’s very pretty,” I said, “but I know what you mean. She’s got a more natural kind of look.”

  Fate glared at me. She and Susan Anderson could not have been more dissimilar. Could that be a turn-on for Howie? Was Fate even thinking straight? Susan Anderson having an affair with Chef Howie? I didn’t think so. “You must be wrong about this,” I said.

  “You think?” she asked. “The weekend Howie disappeared up in Santa Barbara, Susan was supposed to come to New York with Arthur and me. At the last minute, she told us she had a cold and canceled.”

  “That could be a—”

  “You want more?” Fate cut in. “I was getting worried, as I told you. I kept calling the Four Seasons and I could never get through directly to Howie. Then on Sunday morning, when Arthur and I were at breakfast, I asked him a question I knew he wouldn’t know. He had to call up Susan. He used his cell phone and dialed her right there at the table. It was nine A.M. in New York, which is six A.M. in L.A. And Susan didn’t answer. She wasn’t at home in her nice warm bed nursing a cold. She was in Santa Barbara having a romantic tryst with Chef Howie!”

  I wasn’t so sure. At six A.M., it was a good bet that Susan Anderson and her dogs were out on the farm at Pierce College, communing with her flock. But what did I know? These were private issues and I had no reason to get involved.

  “Anyway,” Fate said, “I just want you to keep your eyes open. If you should see anything going on between the two of them, let me know. I’ve hired a detective, would you believe it? But so far he’s turned up absolutely nothing. It’s a huge waste of money. But he’s still following Howie. I have to know the truth, Madeline.”

  “I understand,” I said. “But it may be nothing, Fate. You don’t have that much to go on, after all.”

  “There’s more. How can I convince you? It’s little things. He’s happy all the time. And he started doing this goofy little sign-off at the end of each episode of the show. He gives the camera two winks. It’s awful. I’ve told him now a dozen times, it makes him look like he’s got some sort of twitching disease. But he insists on it. Can you imagine that? He’s listened to my advice every second of every day since we fell in love, and now suddenly he comes up with his own gimmick? He winks? I can’t stand it.”

  “Oh, Fate…”

  Her voice grew more stressed. “I’m convinced he’s sending a signal to some woman. He’s sending her a message of”—she stood up and tossed the bunched-up tissue into the wastebasket—“a message of love. So.” She gathered up her books and binders and briefcase. “That’s why I need an ally. If it’s not Susan Ande
rson, it is probably that obnoxious Greta Greene. And I honestly don’t know which of them I hate more. You help me find out, Madeline. You help me and I’ll help you, okay?”

  I wouldn’t say yes and yet I couldn’t bring myself to say no to a woman so clearly in pain, so I said nothing.

  “Thank you, Madeline. You know I love him, don’t you? Chef Howie is my whole world. I am willing to forgive him if he’ll come to me and apologize and promise me he won’t act crazy again. I just want us to go on.”

  “I know,” I said. So lame.

  “And if there’s anything I can do for you,” Fate said, “just say the word.”

  I looked at the sofa she had just been sitting on.

  “What? Name it.”

  “Do you think you could help me move the sofa over against that wall?”

  “You want to…?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking I’d like to push something heavy against that wall of bookcases right over there. And that sofa would be perfect.” I figured Fate was talking about offering me job security, but I had another kind of security on my mind.

  “Against the bookcases? Are you sure?”

  And after the two of us shoved the sofa across the room, I had had enough of being a gracious hostess. “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do. It’s why I came in early.”

  “Work?”

  “Research, actually.” I had to hunt down Tim Stock’s copy of The Professional Chef, and check page 20. I had to find Nobu: The Cookbook, and check page 198.

  “You are a great find for Food Freak, Madeline,” Fate said, and then she caught me off guard and hugged me. “Even if Greta Greene is the one who found you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m so glad we’ve become best friends,” she said. And then Fate Finkelberg kissed me on the cheek.

  Chapter 18

  What’s new?”

  “Well,” I said, “I spent the night with Honnett, I learned all about merino sheep, and I made a new best friend. But not all together. You?”

  “What?” Holly’s pale face was made up with a lot of black around her eyes, emphasizing their wide-open reaction.

  “There’s more. Tim Stock may be dead, I have been thinking about getting a German shepherd puppy, and I just found two thousand dollars in cash taped in some cookbooks in the Food Freak library.”

  “Maddie, what gives? Tim Stock isn’t dead, he’s missing.”

  “There was a fire at his house last night.”

  “Oh, man,” Holly said, nodding her head in recollection. “Those sirens. And Donald said there was a fire.”

  “And a body was found in Tim Stock’s burnt-out garage next to his melted BMW.”

  “Ew.”

  “But as to whether it’s Tim who’s dead or not, I am having some doubts.”

  Holly was reclining on the new rose sofa in my office with one of her long legs flung over the rolled arm. “How come?”

  “Something about the way Susan Anderson reacted to the news. It was odd. She told me a long story this morning and it sounded like she and Tim have been very tight. But she seemed to dismiss the idea he’d been hurt in the fire.”

  “It’s such a sudden and horrible thing to happen, Mad. Maybe Susan just couldn’t accept that Tim had died that way. She’s in denial. I would be if one of my very best friends…” Holly began to tear up. She looked at me funny.

  “Oh, please,” I said, handing the second woman in as many hours the office box of Kleenex. “Let’s get a grip.”

  “Fine,” Holly sniffled. “But Susan could be in shock. News like that, about a friend you love, it’s too tough to take.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And all that other stuff you were talking about, whew! I just can’t keep up with current events.”

  “Did you stop by my house and get the magazine?”

  “Yes. I got your message. Donald dropped me off there an hour ago.”

  “Was Honnett still there?”

  “No,” Holly said. “Are we going to have a discussion about why we are back with the guys who done us wrong?”

  “No,” I answered. “We’re going on a treasure hunt, instead.”

  “Thank goodness,” Holly said, sitting up on the sofa. “I found the Gourmet magazine on the kitchen island. It’s got Tim Stock’s address label on it so I figured it’s the one.” She reached into her backpack and brought it out. “And there was a page of notes in Wesley’s handwriting. This what you wanted?”

  I reached out and read through the list of cookbook titles Wesley had decoded. “Perfect. Now we’re going to have to hunt for some of these books.”

  “Is this how you found the money?” Holly asked.

  I opened the top drawer of Tim Stock’s desk. Since Holly and I had spent much of the previous evening cleaning up the office, the drawer was now tidy and organized. In the center was a neat stack of $100 bills, held together by a paper clip.

  “Wow. Okay, read off the book titles and let’s get moving.”

  We spent the next forty minutes finding an extraordinary quantity of hundred-dollar bills, each cookbook holding anywhere from four to twelve. They were taped neatly onto the pages that had been indicated in code.

  “How much?” Holly asked.

  I had bundled the money we found into stacks of fifty hundred-dollar bills each. “I’ve got”—I had already finished the count but had decided to count them over just to be sure—”ten stacks here.”

  “And there is, like, five thousand dollars in every stack?”

  I nodded.

  “Wow. Fifty thousand dollars,” Holly said.

  “In cash.”

  We sat there, pretty dazed.

  “Well,” Holly said. “I guess this could explain why everyone seems to want to break into this office. I wonder who knew the money was hidden here?”

  “I wonder. It also might explain why Tim Stock was so keen on living in the little bedroom right next door,” I said.

  “He was?”

  “I just found out from Susan. Maybe he didn’t want to get too far away from his cash. I wonder what he planned to do?”

  “And where all that money came from. Do you think this could be his life’s savings?”

  “Maybe. But wouldn’t it have made more sense to park these hundreds in a nice safe money market account? Susan told me that Tim had a dream and he needed a lot of money. But something is wrong about all this cash, Holly.”

  “Cash,” Holly said, as her leg hanging over the sofa arm tapped a mindless rhythm. “It’s untraceable, Madeline. People don’t hide this much cash unless they are worried about making big deposits in their banks because then it could be traced, right? I’ll bet this cash has something to do with money laundering! Of course, I don’t have a clue what laundering money means. It’s not really washing the money, I know that.”

  I threw Hol an affectionate look. “Very good.”

  “Maybe it’s drug money,” she riffed on. “Or from a bank robbery?”

  Drug money. I wondered. Could Honnett’s theory be right? I considered his suggestion that there had been a series of murders taking place each week and the targets had been involved in some way with the illegal drug trade. I set the ten stacks of bills like the spokes of a wheel, aligning them so they were perfectly arranged on the desktop. What if Tim Stock’s hidden cash was drug money?

  “What do you want to do?” Holly asked.

  “We’ve got to get the money out of here,” I said, “and locked up for the time being, until we can figure all this out.”

  “Where?”

  “Take it over to Wesley’s house, the one he’s selling on Chiselhurst. Ask him to put it in the safe in the bedroom floor and not tell anyone it’s there.”

  “Okay.”

  I was scribbling a note and stuffing it into an envelope. “And do me another favor. Mail this letter for me.”

  Holly looked at the address. “You’re mailing a letter to Tim Stock? But I thought he was…”

>   “Maybe he is. But it’s a way to show our honest intent. We found his money and we’re keeping it safe until he can claim it. If nothing else, the letter will get to one of his heirs…”

  “Right.”

  “…and I’ll feel a lot safer. I’ll let it be known that we found some money in the office and have put it in a safe place off-site. It might dissuade anyone else from thinking of banging me over the head and trying to search this damn room.”

  “Okay,” Holly said, as she finished stuffing the last packet of hundreds into her large black backpack. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Careful?” Greta Greene asked, from the doorway. Holly and I both looked up and saw Greta standing there, calm and cool in a tan pantsuit. “Hi, Holly,” she said. “I need a moment with Maddie, but you can stay.”

  “That’s okay. I was just leaving.” Holly gave me a quick wave and left the room.

  “Do you like your new sofa?” Greta asked when we were alone. She seemed pleased with herself.

  “You sent it?”

  “Didn’t I promise you? You both did a wonderful job of cleaning that mess in here last night. By the way, I stopped back to say thank you but you and Holly must have already gone home. I was worried about you fainting. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure? Well, we’ve got to get started on writing a new final-episode script immediately,” Greta said. “I hate to pile more work on you, Madeline, but I just saw Jennifer in her office and I’ve called a meeting for ten o’clock. That’s in fifteen minutes. Are you all right with that?”

  I nodded, and then changed the subject. “Do you have a second?”

  “Maybe one,” she said, smiling.

  “It’s just some office gossip. But it’s interesting.”

  “Well, for gossip I have two seconds,” she said, pushing her hand through her short blond hair and sitting down.