Dying for a Taste (11 page)

I set down the menu. Ah yes, the reason I was here. I’d momentarily forgotten, what with the gimlets, the taxi ride, and the excitement of being in the City with Nichole and Mei. But I’d have to start asking questions about Letta at some point during the dinner.

“Okay, I think I’m going to start with the roasted red pepper soup,” Mei said, reading from her menu, “and then have the grilled halibut with porcini and sorrel risotto.”

“Well, since I’m here, I’m going to try the escarole salad,” Nichole said in turn, “and then I think the pork with apple coulis. Though why they don’t just call it apple sauce, which would be
so
much clearer, is beyond me.”

They were both looking at me expectantly. From experience, they knew of my difficulties with making up my mind in restaurants. “You guys go ahead and pick a wine,” I said. “I promise I’ll decide by the time the waitress comes to take our order.”

Nichole and Mei conferred over the wine choice, concluding that a Côtes du Rhône would go best with both red meat and fish. Meanwhile, after much agonizing and prompted by the sight of our approaching waitress, I finally settled on the lamb chops with cracked pepper sauce and potato croquettes and the endive and leek gratin for my first course. I’m a sucker for anything with cream in it.

When the waitress returned with our bottle of wine, I decided the time was right to begin my sleuthing. “So um . . . I have a question.”
Lame! Miss Marple would have had a much better opening line
, I berated myself, remembering what I’d said to Eric that night at Gauguin.
You can do better than that
. “My aunt was the sous-chef here back in the early eighties, and I was wondering if Ruth Kallenbach might be available to come out and talk to me?”

“Absolutely,” the server answered, working the cork off. “She often comes out to chat with patrons.” She pulled the cork out with a satisfying
pop
and poured a small portion into Nichole’s glass for her to sample. At Nichole’s nod of approval, she poured us all a glass, then set the bottle down on the table and turned to go.

“Oh, and you can tell Ruth I’m Letta Solari’s niece.”

“Will do.”

After just a few minutes, Escarole’s owner approached our table. I recognized her from the picture on the cookbook in Letta’s office: short and slightly plump with dark eyes; an elegant, aquiline nose; and shoulder-length gray hair pulled back into a single braid. I stood up and started to reach out to shake her hand, but she grabbed me in a hug instead.

“I was so sorry to hear about Letta,” Ruth said, giving me a final squeeze before releasing her grip. She stepped back and looked me in the face. “You have her eyes.”

Blushing—I don’t know why—I mumbled, “Uh, thanks. I’m Sally. And these are my friends, Nichole and Mei.”

Ruth nodded toward the empty place. “May I?”

“Please.”

“It’s a good time for me now,” she said as she got herself settled, “before the rush really gets going. But I can only stay for a few minutes.”

“That’s fine. I totally understand. I just had a couple things I wanted to ask you. About Letta. Her death, that is.”

Ruth sighed and squeezed my hand again. “How you holding up, dear?”

“Okay, I guess. It’s just so freaky, having someone you know—your aunt—be
murdered
.” It was still hard to even say that word out loud, and I shuddered a little as I did so. “Look, I don’t want to keep you too long, so I’ll get to the point.” I fumbled for my bag under the chair and pulled out the copies of the letters and the photo. “I wanted to show these to you. I found them in the Escarole cookbook in Letta’s office, and so I thought maybe they were there for a reason?”

I handed the letters to her, and she pulled a pair of reading glasses from the pocket of her chef’s jacket. A frown grew on her face as she read through them. “So this is what she was talking about,” she said when she’d finished.

“Who? Letta?” I asked.

Ruth nodded. “She was here last month and told me about getting some nasty letters.” She handed the pages back to me with a shake of the head. “Ugh. Makes me almost embarrassed to be a part of the sustainable food movement. Though whoever wrote these, of course, is way out on the fringe. It’s one thing to have those beliefs, and I’ll be honest with you, I do share most of them. That’s why we’re so careful about where we source our food here. But to make threats of violence like that?” She pursed her lips. “I cannot condone such behavior.”

“Do you have any idea who might have written them? I mean, it’s not like I think you would hang out with people like that,” I quickly added. “It’s just ’cause of where I found them, in your book, you know. I figure Letta must have had a reason for putting them there.”

Ruth shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t. Letta asked me the same thing and even showed me a photo of someone she suspected, but—”

“She did? Really?” Nichole and I exchanged glances. “Can you tell me anything about the photo? ’Cause it might be important. For all we know, the person who wrote these letters is the one who killed her.”

“I can do better than that. I can show it to you. Wait a sec.” Ruth stood up and headed for the kitchen.

“Ohmygod,” I said and reached across the table to grab Nichole’s forearm. “This could be the breakthrough I’ve been hoping for!”

Ruth returned, smartphone in hand, and sat back down. “It’s a shot Letta took with her phone of this man who’d been coming into Gauguin and harassing her about her meat sourcing. When I said I didn’t recognize him, she asked if I’d be willing to ask around about the guy and sent me the picture. Here, lemme find it.” Scrolling through a series of photographs, she finally stopped on one and handed me the phone.

The photo was dark and out of focus, but you could tell it was of the Gauguin dining room, taken through the pickup window in the kitchen, it looked like. The man pictured had shoulder-length, but neatly styled, dark hair—not what my dad would call a “hippie cut.” He was wearing a
gray, button-down shirt that hung loosely on his slight frame. Another man sat across from him with his back to the camera.

“Javier—that’s Letta’s sous-chef—told me about a guy that had come to the restaurant a couple times and given her grief for not serving free-range beef or whatever. This must be the guy.” I handed the phone to Nichole, who studied the photograph. “He looks to be in his thirties or maybe forties,” I said. “Younger than Letta, anyway.”

“Probably,” said Nichole, passing the phone on to Mei. “But it’s hard to tell for sure from this picture.”

I turned to Ruth. “But what I’m wondering is, if he was a customer, why wouldn’t Letta have had a name and number from the reservation?”

“I asked that same thing, but she said he was apparently a walk-in both times he came.” Ruth took the phone back and set it on the table. “She thought maybe that was on purpose, that he intentionally didn’t make a reservation so she wouldn’t have his information.”

The chef had been staring down at the image on the screen, but when she looked up, I saw there were tears in her eyes. “I told Letta she should go to the police if she was frightened, but she didn’t want to get them involved, she said. And now I can’t stop thinking that if only I’d been a little more persuasive . . .”

“I doubt it would have made any difference,” Nichole said. “All the cops would have done is take down her report. There’s no way they would have actually opened an investigation based only on a couple kooky letters and an obnoxious customer.”

“But it would probably be good if you sent them that photo now.” I nodded at the phone.

“Oh, I already did—as soon as I heard about the murder. And I talked to a detective down there—”

“Vargas?” I asked.

“Yes, that’s his name. I e-mailed him the photo and told him what Letta had told me.” Ruth started to get up. “Look, I should probably be getting back.”

“Before you go, there’s one other thing I wanted to show you real quick if you don’t mind.” I handed her the photograph, and she put her glasses back on. “You recognize her by any chance?”

She shook her head. “No. Sorry. Was she a friend of Letta’s? It looks like an old picture.”

“She owns a farm up in Bolinas, and Letta was buying produce for Gauguin from her. And I think they may have been more than friends.”

Ruth raised her eyebrows and took another look at the photo. “Huh. Interesting. Perhaps you should talk to Martine, my pastry chef. She was closer to Letta than I was, and she’s been around the Bay Area food scene for decades. She’ll be here tomorrow morning if you want to stop by. I’m sure she’d be happy to talk to you.”

“Yeah, maybe I will. Thanks.” I folded the letters up and put them and the photo back in my bag. “Oh, and any chance you could you send me that photo, too?”

“Sure.” As Ruth was typing in my e-mail address, our appetizers arrived. “There, sent.” She stood and, giving me another quick hug, headed back to the kitchen.

“Well, that was something, anyway,” Nichole observed, digging into her salad. “A real-live clue. So you gonna try to
talk to that pastry chef woman tomorrow? Who knows—maybe she’ll break the case wide open.”

“Right, that’ll happen.” I picked up my fork with a shake of my head, but one taste of the leek and endive gratin I’d ordered chased off all thoughts of photographs and clues. Oozing cheese and cream, it had been topped with
panko
and placed under the salamander until crispy and golden brown. Pure, unadulterated joy.

***

I woke up Saturday morning with a parched mouth and a raging headache. After our dinner, Mei had suggested a nightcap at Absinthe just a few blocks away. Standing at the bar, which was packed four deep with the thirsty postballet and symphony crowd, I had been talked into trying a Sazerac, a sort of old-fashioned with the addition of a shot of fluorescent-green Absinthe. Deadly, in other words. Especially after our predinner gimlets and my share of the two bottles of Côtes du Rhône we ended up ordering.

The luminous clock face on the side table read six fifteen, and all was silent except for the occasional car motor rattling the wood-frame window above my head. I rolled out of the saggy sofa bed and crept down the hallway, tracing the walls with my fingers as I made my way through the dark and unfamiliar house to the bathroom. Locating a bottle of Advil in the medicine cabinet, I downed three pills along with a large glass of water. I then returned to bed and slept for another three hours.

I’d arranged to show up at Bolinas Farms the next day around one, which gave me plenty of time to stop back by
Escarole in the morning. Since Nichole was coming with me up to the farm, she tagged along as well.

As soon as we got out of the car, we could tell that Martine had already been at work for some time. Wafting across the parking lot came the heavenly aroma of freshly baked . . . bread? Pies? Napoleons? It was impossible to say exactly what we were smelling. Probably a combination of all of the above.

I opened the screen door into the kitchen and poked my head inside. A tall, slender woman in chef’s whites and a pink baseball cap stood in the corner of the room with her back to us, working with some dough at a long countertop. The stereo was on, blasting out vintage Fleetwood Mac, and she didn’t hear when I called her name. I waited for the end of the song and then called out again. “Martine?”

She started and turned around.

“Sorry to scare you.”

“That’s okay. I just wasn’t expecting anybody.” I thought I detected a slight foreign accent, but it could have just been a product of my imagination on account of her name. “Can I help you with something?”

I told her who I was and that Ruth had suggested I speak to her concerning my questions about Letta.

“Oh.” She shoved a loose lock of blond hair back under her cap, leaving a streak of flour on her forehead. “Sure. Come on in.” Nichole followed me into the kitchen, and I introduced her. “I’ve got to get these rolls formed right away; they won’t wait,” Martine said, turning back to the counter. “But I can talk to you while I do it.”

She started tearing pieces of dough from the large mound before her, deftly rolling them into small, evenly sized balls
and setting them on an enormous baking pan lined with parchment paper. “So do they know who did it yet?” she asked, finishing one row and starting another.

I had come to expect this question by now whenever I talked to anybody new about Letta’s death and had my stock answer ready.

“It’s been ages since I’ve seen her, you know.” Martine hefted the now-full pan, and Nichole and I backed out of her way. Sliding it onto the top shelf of a bakery rack, she pulled out an empty one and started lining it once more with balls of dough. “When she left Escarole to go gallivanting about the Pacific, she pretty much cut off all her old friends. So I don’t know how much help I’ll be.”

“Well, here. Check out this picture, and see if you recognize the woman in it.”

Martine ceased her rolling and leaned over to take a look at the photo I was holding before her. “Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do. That’s Kate. She used to bartend at some women’s bar in the Castro that was popular back in the early 1980s. I don’t think it exists anymore.” She set the ball of dough down on the pan and scratched her nose. “Wow. I haven’t thought about her in
years
. You know, I do believe she and Letta actually hooked up together at some point . . .”

Martine turned to face me, her expression saying, “Oops, maybe I’ve said too much.”

“It’s okay. I know about her and Letta. And as a matter of fact, I think they’d recently gotten back together again.”

“Whad’ya know.” Martine resumed forming her rolls, a pensive look on her face. “I must say I’m a little surprised, because Kate had quite the temper back in the day. A real
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, if you know what I mean. I think it might have been one of the reasons they originally broke up. But then again, maybe she’s mellowed with age.” Martine started to set a ball onto the sheet pan, but then her shoulders tensed, and she turned toward me again. “You don’t think . . . Kate?”

“I don’t think, or know, anything much at this point. That’s why I’m asking everyone all these questions. But I am going up to Marin to see her this afternoon. She’s got a farm there now.”

“That’s a change from bartending. But then I guess all of us have changed a lot from the way we were back in the eighties.”