Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (14 page)

Henri bowed and moved out of the kitchen so Buddy Higgs could take center stage. He nearly knocked her over as he pushed past her and leaned his hands on the counter.

“I couldn’t disagree more,” he said, staring in turn at each of us. “People choose to get married in Key West because it’s Key West!” He straightened and threw his arms out wide. “To not take advantage of the magnificent setting is criminal! Let’s be honest here: A wedding is a show—the most important party of your lifetime.” He ticked off his points on his fingers. “You definitely want a spectacular, showy backdrop, like a glorious sunset on the Westin pier. And then you enhance that magic with the food and drink. The wedding planners should provide refreshments that haven’t been done for a million other brides.” He bared his teeth in Henri’s direction and then leaned across the counter to look intently at Chef Adam.

“Cupcakes,” he said in a scornful voice, “are so 2010.”

He rummaged in the refrigerator and reappeared
with little chocolate cakes on plates decorated with a lighter-colored chocolate powder and tiny clear spheres that looked like bath beads.

“My presentation includes individual flourless chocolate-hazelnut cakes, garnished with Nutella powder and Frangelico caviar. Some chefs grind their hazelnuts finely and add them to the chocolate batter, but I find this distorts the texture. The secret”—he winked—“is hazelnut flour.”

He brought us each a plate and continued to expound on his methods for making the Frangelico beads. I was too busy sinking into the decadence of the chocolate to pay close attention.

“As the signature cocktail, I recommend a mojito from the tradition of molecular gastronomy,” he added. “The ingredients are simple enough—rum, mint, club soda, lime juice. But the presentation takes the drink from ordinary to spectacular.” He delivered large spoons containing egg-sized gelatinous spheres with mint leaves suspended in them.

“What is this?” asked Toby. “What are we supposed to do with it?”

“Bottoms up,” said Chef Adam, as he tipped the spoon to his mouth.

I followed suit, and felt a warm jolt, as though I’d just swallowed a shot of rum. Which I suppose I had.

“This is spectacular,” said Chef Adam.

“Though perhaps a little gimmicky?” I asked, and Toby nodded.

Once Buddy Higgs had finished telling us which chemicals caused the drink to gel, and finally cleared out of the way, Randy Thompson moved into the
kitchen. He stood behind the counter, his hands behind his back, and smiled.

“A wedding is about the people, not the show. And people connect on a more honest level when the setting is casual. Hence, I’ve designed a picnic at Fort Zachary Taylor Park.”

He pulled a pitcher full of liquid and a small bag of mint from the refrigerator.

“I’ve got a mojito, too,” he said ruefully. “But no gelatin involved.” He turned to face Buddy Higgs. “By the way, Chef Buddy, on Duval Street, they’d call your concoction a Jell-O shot. And it’s usually sucked off someone’s belly. Hopefully not a beer gut.” A titter of laughter swept through the crew, but Buddy looked grim.

We watched Randy crush his mint leaves in the bottoms of three pint-sized mason jars, which he then filled to the brim with ice and a clear liquid. He delivered them to us and we sipped—refreshing and powerful.

“Since I’m proposing a casual setting, and maybe even a barefoot bride, I envisioned the wedding dessert as casual, too.” He pulled a tray from the freezer. “For the bride at the beach, what could be more fun than cake pops?”

He carried the tray over to us and we each took a ball of cake on a stick. Dark chocolate inside, a shell of white chocolate outside, studded with tiny silver beads of candy.

By now, I was feeling extremely light-headed, not to mention trembling from the sugar rush of the cumulative desserts. But the worst culprit had been the shimmery mojito. I reminded myself to watch for signs of
alliance, either between Toby and Chef Adam, or either of them and the candidates. Pay attention to the subtext, I told myself. If something strange was going on among the little factions, I didn’t want to be caught unawares. I wanted the best candidate to land the show. But more important: If one of these people had killed Sam Rizzoli, the rest of us were also in danger. It was that simple.

Henri had seemed less distant than she had the other day. And Buddy had acted very confident. Either he was doing a good job hiding things or he was sure he had it nailed. Had he seen me last night on the yacht? Did he realize what I’d seen?

But I was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on the contest, my woozy mind wandering to the question of whether I’d ever get to plan a wedding. For me. Hard to imagine when I couldn’t even get through a first date without ending up all prickly and out of sorts.

“Judges?” boomed Peter Shapiro, interrupting my thoughts. “Your reactions to our contestants’ presentations?”

“I have two words for you,” said Chef Adam turning to face the camera. “Cake? Pops?”

“Yes, they were a little hokey, but you have to admit they were delicious,” I said, my words slurring just the tiniest bit. “And fun. I’d like to be a guest at Randy’s wedding reception. On the other hand, that gelatin ball might go over in Chicago or Los Angeles, but it doesn’t speak ‘parrothead’ to me. When I was a kid, I used to love those bath beads—the ones that look like gelatin until they dissolve in hot water. That’s all I could think
about when he served us that Frangelico thing. Would it taste like soapsuds?”

Chef Adam glared at me as though I’d lost my marbles.

“The caterer has no business competing with the bride, in my opinion,” said Toby. “And the molecular gastronomy products shout
look at me!
On the other hand, I found the key lime cupcakes to be delightful.”

When we’d said all we had to say, and more, Peter signaled that the taping was over. “You people did well today. You kicked it up a notch. And you look good, too. The black is a big improvement,” he said to me. Then he touched his hand to his forehead and looked at Toby. “Everything all right with you?”

“I’m fine,” she answered with a forced smile. “Are we finished here?”

When Peter nodded, she leaped up and hurried across the courtyard.

12

That would be enough for him. To find her plums in season, and perfect nectarines, velvet apricots, dark succulent duck. To bring her all these things and watch her eat.

—Allegra Goodman,
The Cookbook Collector

On the way out of the studio, I had the happy realization that the police station was exactly on my route home. Before I returned to the boat to take a nap, I’d swing by to talk to Nate in person. I was feeling just this side of euphoric, happy and generous enough to realize that I’d been brusque with him lately. Maybe I’d overread his comments and his reaction to me the other night—he was only trying to do his job. And a brutal job it was. Just seeing the photo of the hanged man up close was devastating—how must it feel to be sifting through every detail of that murder?

I decided I would tell him everything I’d learned about the case so far, and then see if he might like to
come over for dinner. But what to fix? I could try re-creating the seafood diavolo that Henri Stentzel had prepared for the first leg of the contest. But without the squid. I was off them after watching an Animal Planet rerun about their intelligence—how they watched humans with as much curiosity as the humans watched them.

What had the detective eaten the one time we’d been out to dinner? Nothing too unusual. But the spicy red sauce—no man could resist that. It would warm him from the inside out. I felt a small tremor of excitement, thinking about what might follow.

Maybe Miss Gloria could be persuaded to spend the evening with her friend Mrs. Dubisson, especially if I sprang for takeout. Or two tickets to the Tropic Cinema. And a cab to get them there. Or all of the above.

I parked my scooter in a visitor’s spot outside the station. Luckily another civilian had just been buzzed in through the locked front door, so I tripped in behind her, and was saved the awkwardness of calling and explaining myself to the clerk on duty. And I’d never, not once, had an easy phone conversation with the detective. In person was definitely preferable.

I followed the hallway around to the back of the first floor, and took the elevator to Nate’s second-floor space. Outside his office, I fluffed my hair and applied a quick layer of lip gloss. The thought flitted through my mind: Would he kiss me right now? Then I remembered the video camera hidden in his wall clock and had to laugh. He wouldn’t want the first stirrings of romance caught on videotape, fodder for the other
cops’ teasing. I took a deep breath, arranged a sweet but flirty smile, and tapped on his closed door.

My heart galloped as I waited, then the door swung open. “Yes?”

Surprised didn’t begin to describe Nate’s expression when he saw me in the hallway. But he recovered quickly, smiled back and reached out to shake my hand. Behind him, in the chair beside his desk, sat a woman—a beautiful woman with enormous brown eyes, black hair, and radiant skin. The kind of gorgeous but slightly foreign-looking woman who tended to take first runner-up in the Miss America pageant, back when I was a girl watching the TV show with my mother. Stunning, but a little too ethnic to represent the US of A.

“Hayley. Did we have an appointment?”

Of course we didn’t have an appointment. “N-n-n-no,” I stammered. “I was driving by and just thought I’d stop in.”

The beautiful woman lifted one dark eyebrow, her perfectly shaped lips pursing like a resting bow. Yes, stunning.

After an excruciating pause he said, “Hayley Snow, meet Trudy Bransford, my wife.”

“Ex-wife,” she said to him, but added a smile that would have melted a softer man to a helpless puddle. In the running for Miss Congeniality, too.

She rose to her feet, crossed the room in two quick steps, and placed a slender hand in mine, which was still outstretched after the shock of the detective’s handshake, and then his announcement. I looked down. Her nails were capped with perfect pale half-moons. No chips in the polish. No ragged cuticles either.
She wore an eye-popping diamond engagement ring on her right hand.

“Your island is so lovely,” she said in her contralto voice. She barely reached his shoulder. Looked like she would fit perfectly tucked under his arm. “Have you lived here all your life?”

“Uh, no,” I said, finally meeting her eyes. “New Jersey. Recent transplant. My boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—invited me down here. The truth is we didn’t know each other well enough to weather that much intimacy—”

Nate cut in: “Can I help you with something?”

But other than this incessant babbling about my story of moving to Key West, my brain was firing blanks. “Just checking in about the murder. Any news?”

“Still following leads.” He bared his teeth into a feral grin.

Trudy grinned, too, a wide, generous smile that reached all the way to her eyes, lighting her face up along the way. She tipped her head and tapped two fingers on his chest. “He was never too good at sharing information. I can see that hasn’t changed. He doesn’t like to talk about his feelings either.”

“No problem.” I held up a hand and began to shuffle backward from the door out into the hall. “Nice to meet you, Trudy. Catch you later.”

Then I wheeled around and burst the length of the hallway, listening for his following footsteps but not surprised to hear nothing. I vaulted down the stairway to the first floor, thinking I couldn’t bear to be trapped in the elevator with anyone else where I’d have to act normal and unruffled.

At least I hadn’t rushed into his office announcing my intention to cook him dinner, nattering on about the level of heat in the pasta sauce. That would have been too mortifying for words.

Very near tears, I pushed the heavy door from the stairwell into the hallway and nearly slammed into Officer Torrence. His expression of surprise, followed quickly by sympathy, cracked my dam.

“Oh my,” he said, glancing up the stairs and frowning. “You’ve come from the detective’s office. I’m sorry. How did you get in? I would have warned you she was here if I’d known you were coming.”

I started to sniffle in earnest. He circled an arm around my shoulders and shuffled me around the corner to his office. He handed over a box of generic brand tissues and shut the door, waiting for me to pull myself together.

A million questions surged through my mind. How long had Trudy been here? I remembered from an article I’d read about their home invasion a couple of years ago that she lived in Miami. Had he asked her to come down? Had they been talking all along? Where was she staying? Were they reuniting? Was that hair color real? And why the hell hadn’t he said something, like warned me that his wife was back in the picture? His
wife
.

But Torrence shouldn’t be put in the position of feeding me information about his boss. And to preserve the tiny shreds of dignity I still had intact, it felt important to act as though those details couldn’t have made the slightest difference. So I blew my nose and wiped my eyes and tried to smile. “You do have a way of finding me in shaky condition.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said. “Not to worry. Can I help you with something? Besides him?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

I laughed. “I had some thoughts about the murder, that’s all. That’s what I came to tell him.” I shuddered and squared my shoulders.

“You might as well tell me,” he said. “I can pass it on.”

“It will sound silly.”

“Okay.” He nodded.

“You know that Sam Rizzoli was a judge for the cooking contest I’m involved with?”

He nodded again.

And then I told him about my conversation with Toby Davidson. “She’s afraid that someone might be targeting us three other judges. I spoke with our executive producer this morning—he swears that none of the candidates have been preselected to win. That was one idea Toby had about a possible motive—that one of the candidates believed that Rizzoli would gum up the machine.”