Dying for a Taste (10 page)

“English peas are just coming into season. What do you think about a creamy risotto with morels—I saw some great ones yesterday at the farmers’ market—and shelling peas?” Javier chewed on the end of his pen and contemplated the list he held in his hand. “I could do it with a little grated Romano cheese.”

I had dropped by Gauguin the next afternoon to ask about those purchases from Bolinas Produce and found Javier up in Letta’s office working on the next week’s specials. He encouraged me to hang out and help him with the menu, more out of politeness, no doubt, than any need for my opinion. But I was happy to assist. Although I’m certainly no expert when it comes to the cooking side of the restaurant business, I do consider myself a pretty good judge of what makes for an innovative and tasty dish. And besides, learning the ropes of menu planning would have to be an important part of my education—
if
I did decide to take on Gauguin.

“And maybe a dash of mint,” I responded.

“Yeah, I like that.” Javier made a note and then tapped his pen on the pad of paper. “It could be a side, but maybe it would be better as a vegetarian entrée. That would be more cost-effective.”

I nodded. “Good idea.”

“And I thought maybe a broiled salmon with habanero-lime butter. I’ve done that before, and it was a big seller. You marinate the fish in orange and lime juice, tequila, and crushed habanero peppers before you cook it, and then you finish it with a scoop of the butter right before service.”

“I shoulda eaten a bigger lunch,” I said. “I’m already getting hungry again.”

“Now for the veg.” Javier grabbed a clipboard that was sitting on top of the desk. “It’s sort of a slow time of year for new produce, but the asparagus is still good. And there’s always Asian greens. I think I can get some mizuna and baby bok choy from Day Valley Produce.” He flipped to the second page on his clipboard. “Yeah, I thought so. They’d be good as a wilted salad, maybe with a sweet shallot vinaigrette.”

I’d been waiting for the right opportunity to jump in with my question. “Speaking of produce,” I said, “I wanted to ask you something.”

Javier stopped shuffling through the papers and looked up. “Yeah?”

“I met with Shanti last night, and as she was showing me the books, I got curious about one of our vendors, Bolinas Farms. You know it?”

“Sure. We get lettuces and greens, fresh herbs, stuff like that from them. And also sometimes things like fennel, or beans and peas when they’re in season.”

“Well, I mean, I just thought it was kind of odd that y’all would get produce from all the way up there. When, you know, there’s so much similar stuff around here.”

He refused to meet my eye and was slow in responding. “Uh, well . . .”

“It’s just that I’m wondering . . . I mean, I know it’s a long shot, but I was wondering if maybe it could have any connection with those letters and the photo I found here in her office.”

“What photo? I remember the letters, but I don’t remember you talking about any photo.”

“I didn’t? Oh. Sorry.” I grabbed my bag and pulled out a copy I’d made and handed it to him. “Here. This was stuck into the Escarole cookbook along with those two letters.”

Javier’s eyes got big as he looked at the snapshot.

“What?”

He just kept staring at the picture and didn’t answer.

“Come on, Javier—I’m doing this for
you
. What is it?”

“That’s her,” he said finally. “The woman from Bolinas Farms. Though she’s a lot younger here.” He handed the photograph back to me. “She’s got gray hair now and is a little heavier.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“I’ve seen her. Here at the restaurant. I think she’s the owner of the farm, but she makes the deliveries herself.”

“Huh.” I looked at the picture again. If she was Letta’s age, she’d be in her early sixties now. Javier had gone back to his clipboard and was making a pretense of studying one of the pages, but I got the feeling there was something he was leaving out.

“Okay, Javier. What is it? What else aren’t you telling me?”

He looked up from reading. “What?” he asked, all innocent-like.

“Come on, fess up.” I crossed my arms and gave him a stern look.

His shoulders slumped, and he set down the clipboard. “Okay. It’s that, well . . .” He was tapping his pen like crazy on the pad, and I reached over and stopped it.

“Out with it.”

“I think she and Letta may have been . . . involved.”

At my gaping look, he went on. “I walked into Letta’s office a couple months ago without knocking. I didn’t realize anyone was in there with her. And there she was, that woman.” He nodded toward the photo in my hand. “Kate is her name, I think. And she and Letta were . . . kissing. And I mean really going at it, you know? I shut the door as soon as I opened it, but Letta came running out and followed me down the stairs and into the
garde manger
. She told me it didn’t mean anything, that they’d known each other for a long time, and this was just a weird one-time thing. And then she swore me for secrecy—is that how you say it?”

“
To
secrecy,” I answered automatically. But the correct usage of prepositions was the last thing on my mind at that moment.

“So you see, I had promised her I wouldn’t ever say anything about what I’d seen that day. I know she’s dead now, and it can’t hurt her for anyone to know, but I
promised
.” Javier looked close to tears. “Just ’cause she’s gone—I mean, it would still be disrespectful to talk about the dead like that.”

I just let him run on. Letta with a woman? It had never occurred to me; she didn’t seem the type. She was so . . . well,
straight
-seeming. Not only did she dress in frilly clothes, but she flirted with guys constantly in that typical way that so many Italian American women acted around men. And she was engaged to Tony.

And then it hit me: no matter how much she may have tried to deny it or leave it all behind her, Letta couldn’t help but be a product of our culture. And to be gay or lesbian in that culture, where macho men and femmie women were the imperative? That would have seemed like the ultimate disgrace to her
famiglia
. I couldn’t even imagine telling my dad—or, God forbid,
Nonna
—if I were gay.

No wonder she’d sworn Javier “for secrecy.”

I shook myself out of my reverie. Javier was still talking. “Sally . . . Sal! You listening?”

“Sorry. I was thinking about Letta. But I hear what you’re saying. And I get it: why she wanted to keep it a secret and also why you didn’t tell anyone, even after she died. You’re a good friend.”

He gave me a sad smile.

“But I swear to God, Javier,” I said, returning his smile but with my hands on my hips, “if you keep anything
else
from me . . .”

***

The first thing I did when I got home from Gauguin was pour myself two fingers of Jim Beam over ice and then kneel down in front of my CD rack and peruse the titles. I had almost two hours before I needed to be back at Solari’s for the dinner shift, and a little opera seemed just the ticket. Nothing
beats it when you need to emote. I pulled out
La Bohème
and slipped the first disc into the slot.

Next, I got a pot of water heating for some tortellini (store bought and dried—Nonna would not approve), grated some Parmesan cheese, and took a jar of pesto (this was my dad’s, homemade) out of the fridge and set it on the counter. That done, I dropped onto the couch to sip my drink and think.

What a heavy burden it must have been for Letta to conceal her affair with Kate from the world. And how alone she must have believed herself to be, to have no one to confide in.

But she could have confided in
me
; I would never have been judgmental about such a thing. Why had she kept it a secret? The realization washed over me that my aunt must not have felt the same way about me as I had about her. How close could she have felt if she didn’t feel safe enough to tell me about Kate? Had I completely misread the depth of our friendship?

I closed my eyes and listened to the music. Mimi had brought her candle stub upstairs to Rodolfo in search of a light—and a love—and was now singing to him about her lonely existence in a cold Parisian garret waiting for the spring, when the first rays of sun, the first kiss of April, would be hers:

The orchestra swelled up along with the ascending soprano line, and as Mimi held onto her high note, the intensity of the moment caused my eyes to fill with tears.

I invariably cry at this point in the opera. And it’s not just the hormones: I had this reaction even before “the change” began. I guess I just find the concept deeply moving—that after a cold and bitter winter, something as basic as a warming ray of sunshine could bring such profound joy. Add to the mix Puccini’s drop-dead-gorgeous melody, and the passage is a guaranteed tearjerker.

And right now, there was the additional factor of learning that my aunt had not trusted me with the details of her life, with the things that truly mattered to her.

Wiping my eyes, I stood up and switched off the stereo before Rodolfo’s boisterous friends could destroy the mood by shouting up at him from the street.

I had to talk to Kate, obviously. But the idea of simply calling her up on the phone to ask about Letta made me uneasy. It would feel as if I were prying into a part of their lives that was way too private for the likes of me to be poking my nose into.

But I suppose that’s the way it has to be when somebody ends up murdered.

Before I could think better of it, I reached for my phone and punched in the number Javier had given me for Bolinas Farms.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hi,” I responded, flustered that someone had actually picked up. I’d assumed that it was a business number and I’d just be leaving a message. “Could I please speak to Kate?”

“You got her.”

“Oh,” I said again. “Um, you don’t know me, but I’m the niece of Letta Solari.”

It was her turn to say, “Oh.”

“Yeah. I know. This is weird.” I cleared my throat. “So I imagine you’ve heard about Letta?”

Please, please don’t make it be me who has to tell her
 . . .

There was a slight pause, and then I heard “Yes” in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper. “I read about it in the papers.” Another pause. “Do they know yet what happened? Who . . . did it?”

“I’m afraid not. But it’s only been a little over a week, after all.”

The conversation was becoming increasingly awkward because neither of us was expressing any of the traditional “I’m so sorry for your loss” language. The problem was that I did, of course, want to tell her how sorry I was, but since she didn’t know that
I
knew of her relationship with Letta, it didn’t seem appropriate. And Kate no doubt also felt that she should tell me she was sorry for
my
loss, but given how sad
she
must have been feeling about Letta’s death, I could imagine this wouldn’t have been easy.

I decided to just let it go. “Anyway, so it turns out that I’ve inherited Gauguin.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Another thing that’s weird, ’cause I had no idea I was even in her will.”

“Oh.”

“So anyway, I’ve been going over the restaurant books and stuff, and I saw that you’re one of the produce suppliers.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And I also gather that you and Letta have known each other a long time. And that you were pretty close.”

“Yeah,” she admitted, almost as a sigh.

In for a dime, in for a dollar. I plunged on. “So I was thinking it might be good for us to meet—partly because I’d like to get to know all the restaurant vendors but also because you were a friend of Letta’s. And also,” I added, deciding the forthright approach would probably be best, “I’ve been doing some poking around, trying to figure out what exactly happened with Letta. I thought maybe you might be able to help with some information I don’t have.”

“Okay . . .” It sounded like she was thinking about it and then came to a decision. “Yeah, sure. I’d actually like to meet you, too. Did you have any particular time in mind?”

“Um, I know it’s kind of short notice, but I’m actually going to be up in the Bay Area this weekend, and I was wondering, is there any chance I could come by to see you on Saturday?”

“Sure, that would work. I’m pretty much always at the farm.”

“Oh, and I’m thinking of coming up there with a friend. Would that be all right?”

“Yeah, okay. Whatever.” I could tell she wasn’t thrilled at the idea of another person tagging along, but my thought was that having along Nichole—who’s about as “out” as one can be—might be a good thing, that it might make it easier for Kate to talk about her relationship with Letta. And I figured that once I dropped my bombshell about Letta, Nichole would jump at the chance to meet her mysterious, secret lover.

Santa Cruz can sometimes seem like an island, isolated as it is by the mountains on one side and the vast Pacific Ocean on the other. There are only two major roads in and out of town: Highway 1 along the coast and the twisty, redwood-lined Highway 17 over the Santa Cruz Mountains into Silicon Valley. Seeking to avoid the hazards of the rain-soaked mountain route—which locals tend to treat as their own miniature Indianapolis 500—I decided to take the coast highway up to San Francisco on Friday afternoon for my dinner that night at Escarole. Not only was I driving an unfamiliar car, but I was also having to get used to driving a stick shift, something I hadn’t done in years.

When my dad had asked why I wouldn’t be at work that night, I’d told him I needed to deal with “something to do with Letta’s death.” He merely shrugged and said, “Fine,” without asking for any details. Part of me felt bad for keeping the entire truth from him, but the other part knew damn well my father would not be at all happy to hear I was snooping around, trying to find her murderer.

But I wasn’t going to worry about that now, I told myself as I cruised north out of town in the T-Bird.

It’s a glorious drive up Highway 1, along fields of brussels sprouts and artichokes, past driftwood-strewn beaches, and through rolling hills dotted this time of year with splashes of wild mustard and purple lupine.

The sun came out around the time I got to Pescadero, and I had to fumble for my sunglasses and pull down the visor. The late-afternoon light was making the whitecaps sparkle, and for the first time since learning of Letta’s death, I felt able to let it go—for right now, at least.

Time for something more raucous: I ejected the Puccini arias I’d been listening to, popped in a new disc, and joined in David Byrne’s frenzied vocals as he sang of discos, brownstones, and peanut butter.

***

I got to Nichole’s place at a quarter to five. It was after five, however, by the time I found a place to park and actually made it to her doorstep. She and her partner Mei live on Eighteenth Street, just west of Dolores Park, and parking can be a real bitch in that neighborhood.

“Dude!” she shrieked upon opening the door and then crushed me in a bear-hug embrace. Skate punk is Nichole’s native tongue, and she tends to pepper her speech with words like “awesome” and “sick.” Except, that is, when she’s in “professional mode” (her term), at which time she can act as proper and lawyerly as the best of ’em. As long as I’ve known Nichole, she’s had this ability to walk both lines. During law school, she sported a Mohawk and fire-engine-red Converse
high-tops, and I swear that half the time she smoked a bowl before class. Yet she was always the professors’ favorite and ended up graduating third in our class with her pick of plum jobs. Go figure.

“Ohmygod, Sally! That is so
freakin’ weird
about your aunt!” Nichole had bleached her hair blond, and it was cut short and spiked with some sort of gel. Last time I’d seen her, about three months back, it had been a flaming red. I liked the blond look better; it went with her blue eyes and baby face. “C’mon in and put your stuff down. You want a drink? It is five o’clock, after all. Cocktail hour!”

Following Nichole down the hall, I dumped my bags on the sofa bed in the study and then followed her back out again and into the small kitchen, her talking a mile a minute all the while. She pulled two stemmed Martini glasses out of a cupboard and set them on the counter.

I sat down at the kitchen table. On the wall behind me was a cork board with a map of the Noe Valley attached to it. Several pushpins in various colors were stuck in and around the map.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s new. We got sick of always having to remember where the hell we parked. One day last month when I woke up, for the life of me, I had no memory at all of where I’d parked the night before. It took me almost a half hour to find my car.”

“Funny.”

“Not. I almost missed a client’s asylum hearing.” Nichole is an immigration attorney at one of the big nonprofits in town. “Which would have
big-time
sucked. After that, we
put up the map and started marking where our cars are with one of the pins as soon as we get home. I’m yellow, and Mei is red.”

“Okay, I’ll be blue then.” I found where I’d parked and marked the spot with one of the pins stuck to the side of the map.

“Mei’ll be here in a little while. She went hiking at Mount Tamalpais with a friend. I bet they got soaked. So what’d ya want?” Nichole opened the liquor cabinet to display the wares. “I’m having a gimlet.” Without waiting for an answer, Nichole filled a stainless-steel cocktail shaker with ice, dropped three cubes into each Martini glass, and then filled them with water from the faucet. I smiled, remembering how she’d taught me one of the first times we hung out that this was the best way to chill a cocktail glass quickly.

“Yeah, a gimlet sounds good to me. I could use a drink after today.”

“Oh Jesus, I haven’t even asked you about the funeral. How did it go? And how are
you
doing, girl?” She paused and held the Beefeaters bottle over the shaker, giving me a hard look. It seemed like I’d been getting a lot of those of late.

“I’m fine. Really,” I added when she continued to eyeball me. “But it has been weird, to say the least. Go on. Finish the drinks, and then I’ll tell you all about it.”

This seemed to satisfy her, and she continued pouring the gin and then added a few glugs of Rose’s lime juice. Next she inserted an inverted pint beer glass into the shaker and deftly shook the concoction until it turned a foamy white. She dumped the ice water out of the now-frosted glasses, dropped
a slice of lime into each, and then carefully strained in the pale-green liquid.

“Limeade for grown-ups!” Nichole proclaimed, holding up her glass to clink with mine.

We sat in the living room, and I told her everything I could remember that had happened since I’d learned of Letta’s death. When I got to the part about the papers falling out of the Escarole cookbook, I put on my best poker face as I handed her the copy I’d made of the photograph.

“Here, check this out.”

Nichole snorted. “Dyke,” she said.

“Really?” Since she was staring down at the picture, she failed to notice the grin I now allowed to appear. “How can you tell?”

“Oh, c’mon.” Nichole tapped the photo with her index finger. “Just check out that flannel shirt and the jeans and that short hair: classic lesbian look circa the late 1970s,” she recited as if reading from a textbook. “You have any idea who she is?” She finally looked up and saw my cat-who-ate-the-canary expression. “What the hell?”

“I think she was Letta’s lover,” I said. “Javier told me he walked in on the two of them making out in her office a while back.”

“No shit.” Nichole examined the photo more closely and frowned. “That is so weird. I mean, I met Letta a bunch of times, and I woulda never guessed. So much for my powers of gaydar.” Setting the picture on the coffee table, she picked up her glass and sipped her gimlet.

“Well, since she’s also been involved with men, I guess technically this makes her bi,” I said. “Maybe gaydar doesn’t
work so well in that case. Kate’s the woman’s name, by the way. She’s one of the produce vendors for Gauguin. She owns a farm up in Bolinas, and I’m driving up there tomorrow to meet her. Any chance you’d care to come along?”

“Really?” Nichole leaned forward, lips parted in anticipation. “I’ll have to check with Mei first to make sure we don’t have anything else planned, but if not, yeah, for sure. That would be really interesting.” She picked up the photo again. “So where’d you say you found this?”

“In an Escarole cookbook in Letta’s office. That’s why I wanted to go there tonight: to see if anyone knows anything about her. Or these. They were stuck in the book with that photo.” I handed Nichole the two letters, and she read them over, eyebrows arched.

“Jesus.” She dropped the photocopies onto her lap and reached for her gimlet again. “Those are creepy.”

“Exactly my thought.”

“You think whoever wrote them might have killed your aunt?”

“Who knows? But I figure I should at least check it out. Wasn’t it one of those PETA types who fire-bombed that professor’s house at UC Berkeley a couple years back? You know, the one who was using lab goats to produce antibodies or something like that?”

“I think they finally decided it was a more radical group, like the Animal Liberation Front, actually,” Nichole said. “But yeah, those animal rights folks have been known to do some pretty violent stuff.” She read through the first letter again. “But as far as I know, most of their violence has been limited to things like bombings. And toward big corporations and
universities or chain restaurants—not privately owned places like your aunt’s. And I’ve certainly never heard of any of them doing anything like
stabbing
someone.” She set the letter back down and turned to me. “You don’t think this Kate woman wrote them, do you?”

“Well, Letta did put them with that photo of her . . .”

Nichole shook her head. “I dunno. Whoever wrote these seems like he or she has some kind of personal animus against Letta, or Gauguin, not someone who’s romantically involved with her.”

I just shrugged by way of an answer, and we sipped our drinks and stared out the window at the Muni trolley bus rattling up the street. “So you think someone at Escarole will know who wrote the letters?” Nichole asked after a minute.

“Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s as good a place to start as any. And I have always wanted to eat there. Which reminds me: what time will Mei be home? ’Cause we have a seven o’clock reservation.”

“Soon, I imagine. But I say we have another drink while we wait for her, and you can finish telling me your story.”

***

We took a cab to Escarole. After two gimlets each (Mei quickly caught up once she got home), not to mention the wine to come, we all agreed that would be the most judicious course of action. Plus, parking down in the Civic Center on a Friday night is even worse than in Noe Valley.

“Looks like there’s both an opera and a symphony performance tonight,” I observed as the taxi headed up Van Ness. “I wonder what the opera is.”

“It’s actually the ballet,” Mei said. “Opera season doesn’t start up again until June.” She turned to look at the people streaming into the Opera House, many in fancy evening wear. “My parents had season tickets to the ballet when I was a kid, and I never could figure out what the hell they saw in it.”

The cab turned left and pulled over to the curb about a half block down. “Here, I got this.” Mei handed the driver a few bills, and we all climbed out. “But now that I’m all grow’d up,” she continued once we were standing on the sidewalk, “I finally get it. It’s all those guys with those amazing bodies in those tight leotards. Hell, even
I
love to watch them leap around and strut their stuff.” She laughed, and Nichole and I waited while she put her wallet back in her purse and zipped it shut.

Nichole and Mei looked quite the odd couple—one, short, blond, and boyish; the other, tall and athletic with long, black hair and elegant Chinese features. Mei is a Pilates instructor, and the two met when Nichole enrolled in a weight-training class at Mei’s gym. They’d been involved for two years now, and I thought they worked well as a couple. Mei’s calm demeanor was a good foil to Nichole’s tendency toward the manic.

Nichole held the door open, and we made our way through the Escarole bar to the reception area. The restaurant was smaller than I had expected but also way more glitzy. I’d always assumed it would be homey in a classy sort of way—kind of like the downstairs room at Chez Panisse, where Escarole’s chef had started. But Ruth Kallenbach had clearly wanted to make a different kind of statement with her own place.

The first thing I noticed was all the gleaming metal. An enormous chandelier with spiky protrusions made of polished steel dominated the ceiling, and the periphery of the dining area was divided into numerous visually discrete alcoves by screens made from the same material. The walls were painted a pale green and were lined with black-and-white photographs of curvaceous vegetables.

We were seated right away in the main center room next to a large modernist sculpture in green glass. I remarked that it reminded me of some sort of sea creature, like coral or maybe an anemone.

“It’s a head of an escarole, you dork,” Nichole said, shaking her head with an exaggerated roll of the eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Duh.” I opened my menu, pretending to ignore Nichole and Mei’s chuckling at my expense.

“So what exactly is escarole, anyway?” Mei asked. “A kind of lettuce, right?”

“It’s more bitter, like endive,” I said. “But yeah, it is a leafy green and is often used in salads.”

Nichole laughed. “Well, aren’t you just the culinary expert. It appears Letta was right to give you Gauguin.”

“Check it out.” Mei held up her menu. “It explains about escarole here.” I looked where she was pointing and saw that there was an entire section on the first page dedicated to salad greens with a description of what they all were.

“Yeah. It says that escarole is a kind of chicory. Isn’t that what they put in the coffee in New Orleans?” I read on, fascinated. “Did you know that endive, escarole, radicchio, and frisée are all members of the chicory genus?”

“Yeah, Sal, we do, since we’re reading the same thing you are.”

I punched Nichole lightly in the arm and continued reading, but this time to myself. There were all sorts of enticing appetizers and salads listed: an endive and leek gratin topped with Gruyère cheese and panko; a
salade Lyonnaise
made with frisée,
lardons
, croutons, and a poached egg; sautéed rainbow chard with pine nuts and a balsamic vinaigrette; and, of course, an escarole salad with slices of blood orange and avocado.

As I scanned over the rest of the menu, my eye was caught by a box at the bottom of the page with the following statement: