Simmer Down Page 8

  “Is he going to throw up?” Adrianna asked over Walker’s giggles.

  I laughed at her horrified face. Adrianna thought of children the way most people thought of nuclear bombs. “No, he’s not going to throw up. But if he does, I’ll be sure to aim him in your direction.”

  She moved her feet out of the way.

  “Come on, Ade.” Owen snuggled up to her on the couch. “He’s a cute little guy. Aren’t you, little man?” Owen was dressed in his usual quirky attire. As fashion-forward as Adrianna was, she had somehow paired up with the most fashion-backward guy. Tonight, Owen was clad in bright red pants and a matching jacket over a T-shirt I recognized. It was unfortunately emblazoned with the words Beaver Liquors. I hoped he’d keep the buttons on his coat done up. With his ruffled black hair and blue eyes, he was as adorable as ever, even with the inappropriate shirt.

  Walker marched sternly over to Owen. “I’m not a man, and I’m not little. I’m a boy. I’m three, and I have a penis. Want to see?”

  “Walker!” Ben lurched out of his seat in time to stop his son from yanking down his Jimmy Neutron underpants. “Sorry, guys. He’s been interested in, well, his manhood, so to speak.” Ben looked down at Walker. “Kiddo, remember how we talked about the fact that some things are private? This is one of those things.”

  “You have a penis, though.”

  I seriously thought Adrianna might faint.

  An hour and a half later, everyone except Walker was seated at the dining room table. He was in the living room watching Thomas the Tank Engine and eating macaroni and cheese.

  “I can’t believe I have a child that won’t eat anything interesting,” Heather complained as she returned to the table after checking on her son.

  “Ha!” My mother said to the rest of us. “This from a child who drove me crazy the year she was eight and would only eat Middle Eastern food! I sent her to school every day with baba ghanoush and tabbouleh rolled in pita. He’ll grow out of it, Heather. You did. Pretty soon he’ll be demanding you make him Armenian food every day for lunch.”

  Despite the garish and unappetizing porcelain elves that occupied most of the dining space, my parents’ guests enjoyed the delicious dinner: pork loin stuffed with fresh apricots and sage, sautéed spinach, and roasted fingerling potatoes. Josh had advised them on the menu for tonight, but they were both excellent cooks in their own right.

  “Who needs more wine?” my dad asked everyone.

  “Not for me,” Heather said sadly. “One more month of nursing, and I’m done,” she sighed. Lucy was in her lap at the table, passed out asleep after nursing for what seemed like hours. “Eight months of this is more than enough, right?” She looked around for reassurance.

  “Absolutely,” Ben said, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek. “You’ve done great.”

  “So, to Josh and Snacker!” My mother raised her wineglass. “Best of luck with your new job.” We all drank to their success. “So, now, tell us everything. Is the menu set? Is the kitchen finished? Are you both going to become rich and famous and start your own television show?”

  Josh laughed. “Well, I don’t know about rich. I had to take a small pay cut from my last job to work at Simmer.” Heather gave me a knowing look, and I willed her not to say anything. “But,” Josh continued, “it’s costing Gavin a fortune to renovate this place. And he did a stupid thing, which is to pay his contractor by the day instead of getting a price for the entire job. He’s getting royally screwed, if you ask me. But at least, as of today, we have electricity, and the stoves and all the other equipment are hooked up and working.”

  Heather adjusted Lucy in her lap and reached for her water glass. “I would’ve thought any chef job on Newbury Street would guarantee a high salary.” Heather had the nerve to act all innocent while pointedly criticizing Josh’s career!

  “You’d think, huh?” Josh wasn’t easily thrown by my sister. “Once the restaurant starts doing regular business and making money, Gavin is going to give me bonuses every three to four months based on my food cost. If I keep that under control, I’ll get a percentage of the profits. And once Simmer takes off, which I’m sure it will, I’ll get a raise.”

  “Really?” I said, surprised. “I didn’t know that. That’s excellent. Do you have everything in writing?” Naomi had taught me the importance of a paper trail in practically everything you did. I noticed my mother glaring at Heather and me for discussing money at the table, behavior she found rude and classless.

  “Nah.” Josh shook his head, evidently not minding our lack of manners. “Chefs don’t usually have contracts and formal arrangements, unless they’re working for a larger corporate facility, like a hotel or a chain restaurant. Gavin is a good guy, though, and he’s got the attitude that if he does well, I do well, too. He knows what I can do for Simmer, and he’s going to keep me happy. But I have to earn his respect. I can’t just ask for too much without proving myself. It’s an investment. I take a pay cut now, and it’ll come back to me later. But the food is all mine, and he’s trusted me to pick out everything from the kitchen equipment to the plates and serving dishes. Not that I could do this without Snacker, though.” He and his friend did some mysterious little handshake that involved funny finger waves accompanied by what sounded like yodeling.

  “When you were interviewing with Gavin, did you have to cook for him?” my dad asked. “Or did you just show him your résumé and old menus from other jobs?”

  “No, I had to audition. Some employers will hire you without having you cook, but that always makes me worry about what kind of place it is. Most restaurant owners have you audition with a mystery box.”

  “What’s a mystery box?” Ben scooped the sleeping Lucy from his wife, who had been struggling to transfer food to her mouth while holding the baby in both hands. I gestured to Ben to hand the little bundle over to me. I needed a good baby fix once in a while, and there was nothing like holding a warm, blissful sleeping baby. I snuggled Lucy in my arms and gave her a soft kiss on her forehead.

  “Oooh, I know what a mystery box is!” piped up Adrianna, who’d been unusually quiet tonight. “That’s where they put secret ingredients together for you to use in dishes. You have to use whatever’s in there, even if it’s gizzards or something, right?”

  “You got it,” smiled Snacker. “Tell ’em what you had, Josh!”

  “Oh, God, it was a weird mix. Pumpkinseed oil, a whole leg of lamb, a whole salmon, foie gras, veal cheeks, and something called farrow.” Josh looked at our confused faces. “Yeah, I didn’t know what farrow is either. I think it’s some kind of hulled wheat. And because the restaurant wasn’t open when I auditioned, I went to Gavin’s house and cooked, so I didn’t have that many fresh vegetables and herbs to use. Usually you’re cooking a mystery box with more traditional items and enough other supplies around, but I had, like, parsley, chives, potatoes, carrots—just your basic staples. To make matters worse, Gavin watched me pretty much the whole time.”

  “Don’t they always?” asked Owen.

  Snacker answered for Josh, who had his mouth full. “No, not very often. Usually they give you the mystery box and say, ‘See you in three hours.’ Gavin did the smart thing, which is to watch how your potential chef uses his time, how clean he keeps the kitchen as he works, his culinary skills, and all that. For instance, that’s why Gavin gave him a whole leg of lamb and a whole salmon. Not because he expected Josh to cook all of it, but because he wanted to see him break them down.”

  “So what did you make?” asked Owen.

  “I used the veal and lamb for one dish. I cut the lamb into steaks, grilled it, and served it with a warm corn and fava bean relish and a caramelized onion polenta. The veal cheeks, I seared those in the pumpkinseed oil and then braised them in verjuice and chicken stock. Verjuice is like a grape juice, and you can use it instead of vinegar. I put the polenta in the center of the plate, the veal on one side, and the lamb on the other, and I ran the corn and fava bean relish across the
top.”

  “And what about that farrow stuff?” asked Heather, who was for once showing interest in Josh.

  “Well, I cooked it risotto style and served that with steamed salmon and a fennel-orange salad. I didn’t really know what to do with the food Gavin gave me. A mess of food like what he gave me doesn’t give you any freedom. It doesn’t let you show how good you really are. It shows what you can do with a restrained list of ingredients, but it really limits you. If you’re cooking in a restaurant, you won’t be working under those conditions, so I’m not sure how useful a mystery box like that was. But he obviously seemed happy enough with what I did to hire me. He’d seen my résumé and where I’d worked, so he knew I could cook. This was a way to see what I could do in unique circumstances, I guess.”

  “It sounds like you did a superior job, considering the food you were given. I love this concept of ‘auditioning’ for a chef position,” Mom said. “One thinks of ‘auditioning’ for the theater, but that’s really what you are doing. Trying out for the lead. And in order to get the part, you have to show off your performing arts talent! It’s wonderful!” Mom needed to lay off the wine; she was becoming a little too enthusiastic.

  “And so what will your schedule be?” Heather asked.

  Josh and Snacker looked at each other for a moment before Josh answered. “Probably six days until things get steady.” I guess they’d been trying to figure out who would deliver the bad news. “I’ll be off Mondays, and Snacker will be off Tuesdays.”

  My stomach dropped. Six days a week? What’s more, when classes were in session, I was cooped up with Naomi all day every Monday for my field placement. When was I ever going to see Josh?

  “That’ll just be temporary,” Josh said, mostly to me. I looked at him and tried to smile as though I completely understood and was prepared to be the ultimate trouper. “Gavin wants us both to have two days in a row off, but I know myself, and I won’t be comfortable until everything is running as cleanly as possible.”

  Noticing that I was likely to start wailing more loudly than even Lucy ever did, Dad jumped in. “Well, so, how is the menu coming? Are you all set?”

  “The New Year’s Eve menu is going to be a set menu with dishes from the regular menu, which is basically done, too. It’s a pretty big one. I think it’s too big, but Gavin wants it like that. Mostly he let me do what I want, except for what I refer to as the obligatory steak. Every restaurant I’ve worked at has insisted that there has to be some form of steak and potatoes on the menu. I love a good steak, but chefs everywhere are bored silly by having to cook it all the time. Anyhow, we’ll be open for lunch to get the shopping and business crowd, so we’ve got half of the dinner menu cut down into lunch-size dishes, plus sandwiches and stuff like that.”

  Crap. Open for lunch meant Josh would have to be there early. No more long mornings lounging around together. As much as he trusted Snacker, I knew that Josh would be there every day to prep for lunch. And wouldn’t be home until well after the last plate had gone out at night.

  “God, we have so much to do,” Josh said, leaning back in his chair. The weight of what he had taken on seemed finally to be hitting him. “Snack, do you know how to use that scheduling software I was telling you about?”

  Snacker shook his head. I knew Gavin had been installing all sorts of restaurant software on the computer that he and Josh would share. There seemed to be a program for everything: purchasing, recipes, inventory, and so on. Next to Ade, Josh was the least computer-literate person I knew.

  “With everything that goes on at a restaurant, how do you guys get breaks?” Ben asked, reaching for more of the delicious pork loin.

  “We don’t,” Josh said with some weird form of pride. “Most chefs don’t. You work from the minute you get there until after service. If things are slow, you take a few minutes to regroup and grab something to eat. I never eat a normal meal when I’m working. It’s just eat while you cook. Or sometimes you can make food for yourself and the staff around four o’clock or so, before the dinner rush, or after we close at night. The more you feed the staff, the happier they are, and the better job they do for you when you need them.”

  Josh was the kind of chef who worried more about his staff than about himself. He had the worst eating habits and would often eat nothing until late at night after he’d finished work. By then he’d be so hungry that he’d have a huge meal of food from the restaurant, or he and some friends would meet up in Chinatown and binge at Moon Villa. From what I could tell, most chefs ate terribly and lived with chronic heartburn.

  “So what about staffing?” Owen asked with his mouth full. “How many seats are there anyway?”

  “About eighty seats, with another twenty at the bar,” Josh told us. “And in the summer, we’ll open up the patio out front and fit another twenty-five there. The kitchen staff is basically me, Snacker, five other guys to work the line, and two dishwashers. Then there’s front-of-the-house staff. Cole, the general manager, three bartenders, two hostesses, and a bunch of servers.”

  This whole picture started to make me nervous. I was worried that I’d hardly ever see Josh and that when I finally did, he’d be exhausted and destitute. I reminded myself, though, that this job was an emotional and financial investment for everyone involved and that between Gavin’s drive, Josh’s food, and the unbelievable location, there was no way that Simmer could fail.

  Was there?

  EIGHT

  HOPING to get off the topic of the work that Josh and Snacker had ahead of them, I changed the subject to the comparatively neutral topic of Oliver’s murder. “So, has everyone seen the news today? There’s been a lot of coverage about what happened last night at the gallery.” I adjusted Lucy so that her head rested in the crook of my other arm. For a six-month-old baby, she was feeling pretty heavy.

  Josh jumped in. “Oh, yeah, Chloe. I forgot to tell you. Detective Hurley stopped in to Simmer today.”

  “Really? What did he want?”

  “He asked me a lot about the ingredients I was using last night. And, get this, he wanted to know if I’d been using any prepackaged food. Can you believe that? Like I had a box of frozen dinners I was heating up? I guess you could count the panko crumbs as prepackaged,” he admitted. “But nothing else. He also wanted to know if I’d seen anyone eating food other than what I’d been making, particularly snack foods. I think there must’ve been traces of some kind of food on Oliver’s body.”

  Prepackaged food. Hannah had been eating those silly snap pea snacks. Hurrah! She’d thrown the Robocoupe at Oliver’s head and then rubbed her green hands all over his body. I should’ve just left her in front of the police station to make her return trip there easier. She had killed Oliver! Hannah in the role of murderer was fine with me, even though I had no idea why she would’ve wanted to kill her wealthy employer, who was clearly taking good care of her. Or had someone else deliberately left trace evidence of green snap pea powder to implicate Hannah? Or the murderer was someone else who liked terrible food? If so, Barry, the victim’s partner, was off the hook. Barry had traveled all over the world in search of fine food, and at the Eliot Davis Gallery, he’d appreciated Josh’s beef medallions and the accompaniments; he certainly hadn’t helped himself to Heather’s nasty snap peas. Barry’s wife, Sarka, was emaciated. At the gallery, I’d wondered whether she had an eating disorder or a serious illness. In either case, it seemed unlikely that she’d been carrying around prepackaged snacks. Then there was Oliver’s widow, Dora, who looked yellowed and ghastly despite Adrianna’s efforts. Could an addiction to junk food account for her unhealthy appearance?

  Before I could begin to mull over possible motives, I was drawn back in to the dinner table conversation. My parents, Heather, Ben, Josh, and I simultaneously told the tale of last night’s murder to Owen, Ade, and Snacker, all of whom had had the good luck not to attend the ill-fated Food for Thought. I’d already given Adrianna some of the details, but my family loved narrating their own versions
.

  “And then this young woman began shrieking…”

  “I did my best to recall where everyone was…”

  “Naomi was droning on and on…”

  “I spoke to one officer who wanted to know…”

  “Damn, I should’ve driven faster!” said Snacker. “Look what I missed! Could I have some more of those potatoes? This dinner is incredible.”

  “Well, thank you.” Mom passed him the dish. “Although we can’t take all the credit. We had to consult with Josh, who was kind enough to tell us in excruciating detail how to put the pork loin together.” She smiled at him. Cute! I didn’t know Josh had done that. At least my parents approved of Josh. Who cared what Heather thought?

  “Do we know what happens to the Full Moon Group now that Oliver’s dead?” my father asked the table.

  “Presumably Barry Fields takes over everything, right?” I guessed.

  “They probably had an insurance policy to cover this situation,” Owen said. Owen has tried out many jobs, including his most recent stint working on a blimp, and a few years ago worked for about six months at an insurance company. “It’s called a key man policy. You use it when you’ve got a relatively small business and you want to cover yourselves in case you lose a ‘key man,’ a crucial person without whom the business could collapse. They probably had key man insurance to cover the owners. You can use the insurance money to hire a replacement for the person who died, or you could buy out the shares of a business that were left to a family member. In some ways, it’s a pretty general policy, but it’s separate from regular life insurance.” Blah, blah, blah, boring, boring, boring. Thank God Owen didn’t work in insurance any longer. He did tend to change jobs faster than I could polish off a plate of Josh’s risotto, but at least most of his jobs were in fields more scintillating than insurance.

  “Speaking of jobs I’ve worked,” Owen added, “I wanted to announce that I accepted an offer today. I interviewed today to be a puppeteer’s assistant. Doesn’t that sound interesting?”