Topped Chef A Key West Food Critic Mystery (5 page)

“Thank you all for your participation in
Topped Chef
!” said Peter. “We so enjoyed
experiencing
your contributions.” One young blond man grinned but the other candidates looked solemn and nervous, maybe wondering as I was what was wrong with old-fashioned food
tasting
.

“As certain as we are that all of your dishes were outstanding, our judges have spoken! Will the following individuals please join us here on the set: chef Randy Thompson!” The smiley blond man leaped into the air, clapping, and bounded up the steps.

“Chef Henrietta Stentzel, formerly of Hola on Miami Beach, and now chef-owner of Bad Boy Burritos!”

I blinked in disbelief. Then my heart sank with a hollow clunk as a fortysomething woman with a long braid climbed the stairs, looking everywhere but at me. Food was not the only thing we had in common—though I adored her small storefront burrito shop. Unfortunately, I’d suspected her in the murder of my ex’s girlfriend last fall—and from what I could tell, she had not forgiven me.

“And last but not least, meet chef Buddy Higgs!” Peter crowed.

A very tan man with a weathered face and a scraggly ponytail joined the other two as the rest of us clapped. Were Buddy and Randy currently not employed, or had Peter forgotten to mention that?

“That’s a wrap. Chefs are dismissed. Be here tomorrow morning at nine sharp.” Peter turned back to face the judges. “Not bad for a first day.” Sam and Chef Adam got to their feet as Deena came forward to hand Peter a clipboard. “Listen up, people—I have a few tips for tomorrow’s taping. First—and this is very, very important, be here promptly at nine.” He glanced down at his papers. “No offense intended, but I have a few notes to pass along from our photography director. They are intended to help you show your very best sides.”

First he turned to face Chef Adam and gave a little bow.
“We all
know
you’re a real chef—not to be confused with Chef Boyardee.”

Toby and I snickered, but the chef didn’t crack a smile. He adjusted his toque, looking as if he’d like to dive across the table and strangle someone.

“Anyway, my camera people suggest that you lose the white coat. The camera does not love white and it washes out your color and makes you look sallow. And Toby”—he stroked his neck—“a scarf tomorrow maybe? Something salmon-colored perhaps? Our middle-aged quirks tend to show up more distinctly under the lights….”

He smiled regretfully and looked at his clipboard again. “Mr. Rizzoli, watch the loud patterned shirts—they can be distracting to viewers, even make them dizzy. And if they’re dizzy, they are likely to flip to another channel. And Miss Snow”—he grinned and patted his belly—“you have an adorable shape; shall we say plump like a guinea hen? Perhaps choose something less formfitting for the next episode? Less, yellow? But definitely no horizontal stripes, darling.”

Sam Rizzoli snickered loudly enough so that everyone on the set heard him.

As color and heat rushed to my face, I felt myself shrinking into a puddle of humiliation. Then I got mad. The
Key Zest
shirt might very well be a fashion faux pas, but it was my faux pas. And that of my friend and ally Wally, who’d stood up for me this morning in the face of a raging bully.

“You wanted someone to represent
Key Zest
on your show,” I heard myself say. “The shirt comes as part of the package.”

Peter looked stunned but then he burst out laughing. “Brava! I didn’t think you had it in you.” He tossed his head, the white mane flying. “That’s it, people. Until tomorrow.”

I plastered on a smile, then gathered my backpack and sunglasses, and walked out. Wally owed me big-time for this.

4

I’ll have what she’s having.

—Nora Ephron

I was already antsy about having dinner with Detective Bransford later this evening. But even though I’d stood up for myself in the end, Peter Shapiro’s “guinea hen” comment magnified my nerves times ten. I tore through most of the items in my closet before settling on black jeans and a black sweater. According to my mother, who knows these things, sticking to one color was supposed to be slimming. And then I added my lucky red cowboy boots, which, as far as I was concerned, went with everything and took five pounds off, too. At least six times I checked my phone to reread the exchange of text messages I’d had with Bransford last night.

Him:
I made a reservation at Michaels.

Me:
Been dying to try Michaels. Sounds great.

Him:
Steak from Chicago and Hayley from New Jersey, a perfect menu.

He’d even added a little smiley face, which seemed utterly, nerve-wrackingly out of character. Once I was ready—too early—I paced in tiny circles around the living area, yelling out answers to
Jeopardy!
before the contestants could get to them.

“You’re making me woozy,” said Miss Gloria from her seat in the galley. “Come sit with me and try a bite of dinner. I used to fix this when the boys were little but I couldn’t remember all the ingredients. I’d love a professional opinion.” She patted the chair beside her, her smile a little quivery.

So I grabbed a fork and a small saucer from the dish drainer, plopped down in the seat at the kitchen table not occupied by sweet old ladies and pushy cats, and nibbled at her tuna casserole.

“What do you think?” she asked, grinning hopefully. Either Miss Gloria was terribly out of practice or had never really enjoyed cooking. I was betting on both, but especially the latter. Mayonnaise, pasta, and dark tuna in oil, all mixed together and heated through—something you might find on a college student’s hot plate. Both cats were standing sentinel on the couch, drawn, I was sure, by the fishy odor.

“Delicious,” I said, shuttering my eyes closed for dramatic effect. “It reminds me a bit of one of the chefs’ dishes we chose this morning. Let’s see…cheddar cheese, a hint of pickle relish, overtones of mayonnaise, a dash of dehydrated onion flakes?”

She giggled and ladled another spoonful onto my dish. “You forgot the Worcestershire sauce. That’s my secret ingredient.” She rested her elbow on the table and put her chin in her palm. Her eyes twinkled, set off
by the rhinestones on her pink sweatshirt. “Do you think Nathan Bransford is
the one
?”

I shivered and let my fork clatter to the table, then crossed my arms in a big
X
to ward off that thought. “I have no idea—I’m really bad at this. I thought Chad Lutz was my destiny and you know how that worked out.”

Chad and I had lasted five short weeks after I moved to Key West to live with him last fall. But to be painfully frank, I barely knew the guy when I followed him the length of the eastern seaboard—as my mother and my closest friends were fond of pointing out. In the end, I came out way on top, landing in the paradise of Key West, which might never have occurred to me otherwise. I thanked Miss Gloria again for the bite of casserole, excused myself, and went to brush my teeth for the third time this evening and grab my purse.

When we scheduled this dinner date, the detective—Nate, I had to remember to call him—had insisted on picking me up. He was old-fashioned that way, he’d said. Which made me a little more nervous because I like to be able to bolt if necessary. Plus, the idea of arriving at a restaurant in a police car made my stomach turn—and I’d never seen him drive anything else. At ten minutes to seven my phone buzzed with a call from Nate. My mind, programmed to expect disaster lately, assumed he was canceling.

“Sorry,” he said. “I need to spin by the harbor and check something out. Do you mind meeting me at the restaurant? I may be a couple minutes late.”

“No problem,” I assured him, my blood pressure dropping a few points from the sheer relief of taking
my own ride—and a little giddiness at knowing we were still on. I grabbed my coat, kissed Miss Gloria on the cheek, and kissed the gray
M
marked on Evinrude’s forehead, and started down the dock toward my scooter.

Minutes later, I stood alone at the host’s podium outside Michaels on Margaret Street, nervous as a polydactyl cat in a stampede of tipsy tourists. I would not have guessed that this unobtrusive gateway on a quiet residential street opened up into the charming courtyard of one of the best restaurants in town.

“Reservation for two, Bransford,” I said smiling weakly at the host. “The other half of the party is running a little late.”

“May I seat you outside?” asked the host, smoothing his tie down the length of his crisp, white shirt.

“Perfect,” I said, although wondering whether Nate might rather be indoors. January was “winter” in Key West, like everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, and the locals took the season seriously. But the overhead heaters would warm the nip in the night air, and the splashing of the big fountain at the back of the courtyard might take a tiny edge off my nerves. I could see myself hyperventilating if we ended up trapped at a table in the back of the small indoor space.

I wasn’t usually quite this nervous about dinner with a new man but Nate and I had suffered a series of ruinous interactions over the past few months, none of which could be properly called a first date. The evening on which my mother had tagged along might have been the worst outing in all of romantic history. Hard not to keep running over the script like a tongue on a
rotten tooth. So I much preferred to back up and start fresh. On the other hand, that put all the first date pressure squarely on this evening.

The host seated me and assured me the waiter would be around shortly to take my order. I pulled out my phone. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t consider this dinner as review material for my food-critic job—it would be too easy to overlook important social cues if I was busy whittling clever sentences in my head about the food. On the other hand, eating out was a busman’s holiday. How could I ignore it?

I snapped pictures of the fountain and the bar, which was buzzing with customers eating small plates of food and dipping vegetables and bread cubes into vats of fondue, and then jotted some notes on the décor. The rustic wooden floors, the living bamboo wall separating the restaurant from the property next door, the white wooden ceilings with fans, the strings of tiny lights following the line of the eaves, the clusters of tropical greenery with uplighting, all made it feel cozy and romantic. My phone buzzed with an incoming text message from Nate’s phone number.

Fifteen minutes. Sorry. Order drink and appetizer. Be there asap.

Oh geez. Now I had the pressure of ordering for him piled on to the pressure of waiting for the date to begin. When the waiter stopped by, I selected “our salad” thick with shrimp, eggs, provolone, pepperoncinis, and salami for Nate because it sounded manly and substantial, and grilled asparagus with ham, roasted peppers, and Boursin cheese for me. And finally, I added a Bloody Mary for my jangling nerves.

I’d finished the asparagus (just a hair too much ham for my taste) and the drink, including licking the circle of celery salt off the rim, and begun nibbling on his salad—delicious, when he texted me again.

Twenty minutes. Order me a steak, medium-rare, and baked potato?

Which seemed odd. How long would it take to cook a steak? Why didn’t he order when he got here? Maybe he was having regrets about the entire evening. I clicked back over to the messages I’d been studying all day. He hadn’t sounded regretful—more like he was really looking forward to the date. Maybe he imagined we’d gobble the dinner and then go back to my place and…forget it. With no privacy to mention, there would be no romance on Miss Gloria’s houseboat. Besides, I was nowhere near ready to take that step. I waved the waiter over, explained that my date was running even later than predicted, and ordered the strip steak for Nate, and the snapper meunière for me.

“We have a very popular chocolate lava cake for dessert,” the waiter said. “It comes with vanilla ice cream. We like to warn folks ahead because we prepare them individually and they take about twenty minutes to bake. Shall I add that to your order?”

“Definitely,” I said, mouth watering at the prospect. Pointing my internal compass toward that dense, warm chocolate would make me feel better, no matter what else happened—or didn’t happen—tonight. “And could you bring along a glass of the house red wine and one of the white?” Nate hadn’t said anything about alcohol and maybe he couldn’t drink while on the job,
but the longer I waited, the more nervous I felt. And I hated to drink alone.

After the waiter had cleared my appetizer plate and delivered the wine, I tapped the web address of the
Key West Citizen
into my phone to see if there might be breaking news in the crime report—something that would require the services of the top detective on the KW police force. But the latest entry—several hours earlier—was a story about a homeless man who’d been evicted from an Old Town bar for falling asleep and refusing to leave. I hoped it wasn’t Turtle. In any case, that was a bread-and-butter no-brainer for Key West cops: Nate would never have been siphoned away from dinner to handle that.

Twenty minutes came and went and so did the waiter with our main courses. “Shall I keep the gentleman’s dinner in the kitchen so it doesn’t get cold?”

I glanced around to see if the other diners were watching, probably speculating that I’d been dumped. Not only dumped, but left with a big fat check. “He said he’d be here any minute,” I told the waiter, who nodded with raised eyebrows, but then backed away.

Minutes passed, three then four. I hated to let my fish congeal in its rich artichoke sauce. So even though I felt awkward and foolish about eating solo in the flickering candlelight, only the untouched steak sitting at the place across from me, I dug in. The fish was buttery and delicious. And the wine slid down my throat like a sudden rain through a dry riverbed, dampening my embarrassment at dining alone at a table clearly set for two.

Finally, my phone rang. Private caller. “Hello?”

“It’s Detective Bransford. Nathan. Nate. I’m not going to make it,” he said brusquely. “I’m really sorry.”