Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (19 page)

Buddy turned away, frowning. “Ridiculous,” he muttered, and stumped over to join Henri.

While we three judges dissected Randy’s contribution—delicious to my mind, odoriferous and heavy to Chef Adam’s, and overly spicy to Toby’s—the
Topped Chef
assistants began to cut the remainder of the food into bite-sized portions and set small plates out on our table for the big-spender gold-level audience members to enjoy. The crowd pushed forward to get dibs on the samples, nearly trampling the rest of us in the rush. A cacophony of clanking silver on plates and the chatter of the diners began to rise.

Right in front of me, a large woman with a florid face suddenly crumpled to the ground, moaning and grabbing at her stomach. She flailed on the concrete, foaming at the mouth.

“Stand back!” I called, my voice weak with fear, and then crouched down to speak to her. “Are you all right?” Of course she wasn’t all right—she was writhing in pain, her eyes rolling back in her head, unable to answer at all.

“Call 911,” I yelled into my microphone, and this
time the words echoed out over the crowd. I smoothed down her purple-flowered muumuu to cover her thighs, murmuring platitudes about how help was on the way.

More people pushed forward, grabbing for plates and asking how they could help and what was wrong…. I began to feel light-headed and queasy myself and sat cross-legged on the ground, patting the woman’s sweaty forehead with a paper napkin.

Finally, Peter Shapiro and Deena pushed through the onlookers, forcing them aside to leave space in front of the stricken guest. I heard the whine of the approaching sirens and then the clatter of a stretcher being pushed across the bricks.

A gaggle of paramedics appeared and two of them knelt to attend to the woman. One slipped an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth, while the other attached a blood pressure cuff and took her pulse. Then he started an IV while the first medic attached what looked like an EKG machine to her chest.

“What happened here?” the lead medic asked as he worked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “One minute she was eating and the next she just crumpled.”

“Eating what?” he asked. “Does she have food allergies?”

I shrugged helplessly and Peter elbowed me aside.

“It’s a cooking reality show,” he explained at the same time that one of the cops assigned to crowd control on Mallory Square arrived. “Our top chefs have prepared meals from the ingredients we provided. They all had access to the same things, with varying
degrees of success in the outcome. But it looks to me as though she may have been stricken with a heart attack.”

Ignoring Peter’s explanation, the policeman consulted with the paramedics and then addressed the crowd. “Does anyone else feel ill?”

No one came forward.

“Is anyone here related to this woman?”

A tiny woman wearing a pantsuit that resembled pajamas pushed up from the back of the crowd, looking shaky and scared. “We’re traveling together. We came off the cruise ship this morning.” She pointed over at the hulking boat tethered to the pier and then glanced at her watch. “Oh my gosh, I told her we should have stayed on board. We’re due back in an hour. Do you think she’ll be okay?”

The paramedics did not answer, hoisting her large friend onto the gurney and strapping her down. They raised the stretcher waist high and pushed the woman and all the equipment back toward Front Street, clattering across the brick and concrete, the distressed woman’s companion in tow.

A policeman I recognized from the near-drowning incident on Mallory Square came over to me. “Miss Snow, yes?”

I nodded.

“Please tell me what you noticed before and after this woman took ill.”

“As Mr. Shapiro said, this is one of the legs of a contest that will determine a new reality cooking show host. Once the food was set out on this table, there was a mad crush for people to grab plates and taste it. She
was one of the first to get a plate. And then she simply buckled to the concrete.”

“What was she eating?” he asked.

“The food that our contestants had prepared. All three of our chefs had access to the same ingredients,” I explained. “Some were used by all three and some were only chosen by one. But she would have had a little of everything on her plate.” I paused to re-create the dishes in my mind’s eye and identify anything that seemed off. “Henri Stentzel did not use the jalapeño, if I remember right. Which is a little odd, considering her background. And her salsa tasted a bit salty, which I don’t think she intended. I think she intended for it to mirror the sweetness of the mango.”

The cop wrote all that down and glanced back up. “Anything else?”

“The cream sauce tasted a little curdled,” Chef Adam broke in. “And remember that I thought there was a bitter aftertaste to Henri Stentzel’s dish?”

Though that was all true, I hated to say anything else that would implicate one of the chefs in a poisoning when it was more likely the woman had arrived with a medical condition. She had appeared heavyset and red-faced—a walking medical time bomb.

“Chef Stentzel did complain about the citrus tasting old,” I said, and then continued. “Randy Thompson used a ton of butter and cream. Is it possible that the woman had a severe case of lactose intolerance? All of us judges ate the same things she had on her plate, and none of us are sick. Although I do feel a little woozy.”

The cop squinted at me, pen hovering over the small
pad, looking as though my theory was so absurd that he could hardly bear to write it down.

“I’m only saying…there were so many variables. How would you possibly sort them out?”

When all the questions had been asked and answered, and the crowd had been cleared away and all traces of the sick woman removed, Peter pounced on the remaining cops.

“Someone is absolutely sabotaging my show,” he said, his voice furious and hoarse from shrieking at the onlookers to clear the way. “This is not acceptable. First my A-team judge is murdered, now this. I’ll be completely ruined. Is there one law enforcement official on this godforsaken island who has the slightest clue what they’re doing?”

16

But as a whole, the thing is gout on a plate.

—Julian Sancton

I staggered back down the dock to our houseboat, homing in on the cheerful white lights that twinkled along the roofline and the magical tones of Miss Gloria’s wind chimes. As I got closer, the fine, pungent odors of barbecued spareribs and sweet-and-sour soup scented the air. I felt immediately ravenous. We’d hardly had a chance to eat anything before the flowered muumuu woman took sick and all taste-testing ground to a halt. On the way home, I’d decided the queasiness was a sympathetic reaction, all in my mind.

I hung my jacket on the peg outside the door and went inside. Miss Gloria, Connie, and Ray were eating Chinese takeout at the kitchen table.

“Oh my, you’re home early. We didn’t wait for you to order,” said Miss Gloria. “We figured you’d be stuffed after tonight’s event. Your mom’s here, too,” she added, and pointed to the computer.

They had Skyped my mother, so she could join in the feast. On the computer screen, I could see that she also had cartons of Chinese takeout arrayed in front of her on her table at home in New Jersey.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, waving at the screen. “Actually, I’m starving.” I dropped my backpack in my room, washed my hands, then stopped in the galley to grab a plate and a pair of chopsticks. As I took a seat and began to scoop food onto my plate, I noticed the man sitting next to Mom, eating an eggroll. I froze, put the green beans down, and gawked.

“Oh, Hayley darling,” Mom said, blushing, “where are my manners? You haven’t met Sam Cooper. My boyfriend.” She grinned and put a hand on his forearm.

My friends stopped eating and fell silent, trying not to stare at me.

“I wanted to introduce you two first before the gang met him, but then Miss Gloria called and suggested I join them for Chinese. And I figured we could chat about wedding stuff, too, since Connie and Ray would be there. But then Sam called for an impromptu dinner—” She took a deep breath and smiled again. “So here we all are.”

Sam the boyfriend smiled, too, leaning toward the computer screen to make eye contact with me. He had a full head of salt-and-pepper hair and wore a pair of black-rimmed glasses and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Cute in a middle-aged, professorial kind of way. Not the free spirit, artsy kind of man I imagined my mother would fall for. Not like that at all.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Sam said. “And
you look so much like Janet. Two beautiful ladies. I look forward to getting to know you at the wedding.”

Mom had invited him to Connie’s wedding? Things had moved a lot faster than she’d bothered to tell me. I forced a smile. “Same here.”

“Speaking of the wedding,” Mom said, “Connie’s agreed to let us throw her a shower early in the week of the wedding. It makes more sense to do it then when everyone’s already in town. It’s not that easy to get to your little island paradise.”

“That’s part of the point,” I said, feeling grumpy. Wasn’t the shower supposed to be the maid of honor’s territory? That would be me. I forked a big helping of General Tso’s chicken onto my plate, along with lo mein and spicy fried green beans.

Connie poured me a big glass of white wine and patted my hand. “Eat. We’ve all been so busy here, we haven’t had a chance to hammer out some of these details. Thank goodness Janet’s willing to goose us along a bit.”

“I knew you girls would get around to it,” Mom said. “But I have more time on my hands than you do.”

I slumped down and began to shovel in the food. Who could argue with her logic?

“We worked out three dates when I could fly to Miami to shop for the dress,” Mom continued. “You and Connie can decide when it’s convenient to drive up and meet me. It’s less than two months away now—way too late for a special order. But Connie’s so tiny, I’m sure we’ll find something lovely. And a dress for the maid of honor, too.” She winked at me.

Ray moaned and stood up, heading to the galley. He
clattered his dish into the sink. “Speaking of which, I need to get to work or we’ll never be able to afford all these wedding gewgaws.” He stopped to ruffle Connie’s hair. “Are you sure we can’t just be friends?”

Mom giggled. Had she told him the story about my father’s panic?

Connie slapped his hand away and gave him a little push. “Sit down, you silly man. Getting married was all your idea. We’re almost finished here.”

“Whatever happened to the taste-off?” Mom asked me. “We never thought you’d get here so soon. And we certainly never thought you’d show up hungry.”

“Most of the food ended up getting packed up in trash bags to be taken to the police department. One of the guests took ill after eating what the chefs prepared. You can’t imagine what a disaster that was—an ambulance, angry chefs, and hordes and hordes of hysterical tourists watching the whole event come unraveled.”

“Good lord, Hayley,” said Miss Gloria. “Was it some kind of allergic reaction?”

I shrugged and finished chewing a mouthful of vegetable lo mein. “The medical people looked worried, for what that’s worth. They whisked this woman and her friend off in an ambulance.” I explained how she had been among the first to score a small plate that contained samples of each of the contestants’ dishes. “Obviously, you think about nuts first, since some people have such a deadly reaction.”

“I bet I took your father to the ER ten times over the ten years we were married,” said Mom. “If you’re a grown man and terribly allergic, wouldn’t you think
you’d ask about peanuts before you ate a strange dish? Even a nice restaurant can make a mistake.”

“But there were no nuts on the ingredients table,” I said, trying to divert my mother from a rant about Dad’s flaws. Especially in front of Sam. “Shapiro and company would never take a risk like that.”

“But you don’t think there was something wrong with the food?” asked Miss Gloria. She discarded a barbecued rib on her plate that had been gnawed down to bare bone.

“I can’t imagine that there was,” I said, scraping the last bite of General Tso’s chicken onto my plate. “We three judges sampled everything before this spectator took sick. But I’m positive the police will be testing for poison, just in case.”

“Certainly the reality show staff wouldn’t have tainted the food—that would totally ruin the show,” my mother said.

“And the legal repercussions would be staggering,” added her boyfriend. He shrugged and added: “Sorry. I can’t help myself. I’m a lawyer.”

“And a good one, too,” said Mom, picking up one of their white cartons. “More fried rice?”

“Thank you. Just a soupçon.” Sam patted his stomach and beamed.

Lordy, lord. I’d encouraged my mother to date but I hadn’t thought through what it might feel like to watch her in a blossoming romance.

“Peter Shapiro, the director, was livid,” I said. “He suspects sabotage, but then he’s been kind of paranoid all week.”

“Well,” said Connie, “if you wanted to knock out a
certain rival, one sure way would be to poison the food they’d prepared and make their fans ill. Though you might run the risk that they’d earn a certain sympathy vote.”

“And how would you know who was going to eat the doctored plate?” asked Mom.

“Maybe you wouldn’t care,” said her boyfriend. “Maybe that’s not the point.”

Mom frowned. She had a hard time thinking the worst of people, except occasionally my father. “Tell us about the contestants again.”

I started with Henri. “It seems like she’s been antsy ever since she had to sell her restaurant in Miami Beach. Not that I’ve talked to her at all this week—she’s still pissed at me because I suspected her of murdering Kristin Faulkner.” I bit into the lone remaining egg roll, not that I needed more calories. But eating helped me think. I corralled the snippets of information I’d noticed over the past few days and tried to piece them together in my mind. “She badly wants to win, even though she’s not saying that directly as much as the other two. Her career is stalled—you can see it in her eyes.”