Dying for Chocolate Read online

  “Do you know where there’s a cake plate, Mr. Harrington?”

  “No. But you better look busy. They’re coming.”

  With this he started to open cupboard doors and clatter through them as if he were genuinely seeking a plate or a glass or something, which he was not. I was standing holding the cake and feeling stupid when Weezie and Elizabeth came banging into the kitchen.

  Elizabeth’s voice was loud and still hostile. She said, “You’re the one who’s vulgar.”

  Then the two of them stopped, startled to see Brian and me gaping at them. Brian was clutching an upside-down casserole dish and I was balancing the cake. Weezie cocked her slender, evenly tanned face toward Brian. Her silver-blond mane, long, glazed scarlet nails, and crinkled tan pantsuit gave her the aspect of a cougar about to strike.

  “What the hell is this?” she demanded.

  “Honey, don’t—”

  “Mrs. Harrington—”

  “Don’t call me,” Elizabeth interrupted Brian’s and my protestations in her same furious tone. She cocked her head of wild blond frizz at Weezie. She had that drawn look vegetarians get when they aren’t getting enough of something. I wanted to reach out to her, to say something to her about Philip, but her rage with Weezie immobilized me. “Don’t call,” she said to Weezie, her finger stabbing the air, “don’t write, don’t get your friends to bug me. Leave me and the memory of my brother alone, do you understand?”

  “Why won’t you listen to me?” shrieked Weezie, but Elizabeth had whirled and stomped off. While the three of us stood there, Elizabeth’s Aspen Meadow Health Food truck whizzed down Sam Snead Lane.

  “Honey,” said Brian Harrington, “how about a drink?”

  “No, thank you,” Weezie said crisply. “I have a little surprise for Goldy,” she said. One of the glazed nails was pointing at me. “Let me know when you’ve finished setting up,” she ordered before breezing out. She did not look at her husband or me. When she was marching noisily up the hall stairs, Brian eyed me ruefully.

  “Do you want a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I felt sorry for him. But I knew if I had one teensy-weensy drink, with what my ex-husband had told me earlier about Weezie and Philip, and the impending problems with the two Pettigrews, I’d be tempted to drown my grief in an entire fifth. “Maybe later,” I added with more sympathy than I intended. “After the party.”

  “Oh?” He gave me a look. With a half-smile and raised eyebrows, he asked, “Are you staying after the party?”

  How had I gotten into this? I had heard about Brian Harrington. I had seen him leaning toward my aerobics instructor and asking questions: “Where exactly are the obliques? Trace the muscle out for me when I twist over in this sit-up. Oh,” he’d say, “I’m not sure I’m tensing the hamstring muscle when I’m pulling it out in this ski exercise. Put your hand on it.”

  Was I staying after the party? Ha. I didn’t answer, but carefully put the cake down on the countertop. My arms ached. Then I rummaged through a cupboard until I found, miraculously, a crystal serving plate. That feeling of irritation, of being intruded upon, was creeping up. I needed to be alone to work. Never mind that it was his kitchen.

  I said, “I’m staying to clean up, that’s it. Does Mrs. Harrington have a salad bowl she wants me to use tonight? I really need to get to work in here.”

  “Oh, sure. It’s probably around here somewhere.” He didn’t move but eyed me steadily with a suggestive half-smile.

  I pursed my mouth into my best imitation of a displeased schoolteacher and put my hands on my hips.

  Brian Harrington raised his eyebrows again and said, “Am I being dismissed?”

  “Sorry. I need to be alone while I work.”

  He remained immobile while I began the hunt for a bowl. He said, “You were going out with Philip Miller, weren’t you?” I slammed cabinet doors and nodded curtly. He went on, “Did you hear his sister say something about giving his body to science?”

  I found a salad bowl on top of the refrigerator and began to line it with paper towels. “He didn’t talk to me about being an organ donor. If you don’t mind, I’d really rather not talk about it.” So saying, I rattled through drawers looking for serving utensils.

  “Aah. . .” he began.

  What in the world was the matter with the man? I sighed to let him know I was put out and said, “Now what is it?”

  He smiled. “Will Sissy Stone be coming tonight?”

  “If I tell you, will you let me do my work?”

  “Yes, you cute little thing, you.”

  I picked up the cake and walked quickly toward the refrigerator. I said, “Sissy is coming tonight.”

  I could feel him moving in my direction. He murmured, “That cake just looks good enough to eat.”

  I hrumphed and opened the refrigerator with my elbow and knee. If I hadn’t been concentrating so hard, I would have realized how close he was. Suddenly there was a small nibble of cool lips on my neck.

  He was kissing me.

  I dropped the cake.

  Crystal shattered with an ear-splitting crash. The mousse fillings splattered wildly, like cream and mud flung all over the floor. Clods of cake skittered in every direction. The tempered chocolate broke like bricks.

  “You idiot!” I yelled.

  Brian calmly surveyed the mess. “Sorry, dear,” he said mildly. “You should have been more careful.” He glided out of the kitchen.

  I looked around. I think I was looking for a rope. The kind you strangle people with. I shouted after him, “Now what am I supposed to serve for dessert?”

  10.

  After twenty minutes of mousse, crystal, and cake removal, I traipsed back toward the Farquhars. The last thing I needed was more cooking.

  I was so angry I was beside myself. I struggled to focus on André, my mentor in food matters. When I apprenticed with him at his restaurant in Denver, his shelves creaked under their loads of dense Callebaut chocolate and fragrant African vanilla beans. Each of his cooks received a five-pound block of butter at the beginning of the workday. All he would say was, “Use it up.” Andre insisted on making Italian meringue for each batch of fudge. “Essential,” he would shout over the roar of the mixer. On our lunch break he would expound. “Let the dieters be responsible for their own willpower. Their health is not your concern; your income is not theirs.” He would demand, “Do you know the significance of the last course? It is what will linger in the memory and on the tongue.”

  What does that best?

  Chocolate. In spite of my fury I smiled, remembering. Beneath my feet the ground was cold and spongy. Chilly fingers of grass swished against my heels. I came through the security gate and made a graceless leap onto the Farquhars’ driveway, sidestepped rivulets of melting snow, and thought about the most important thing.

  Even before Weezie insisted on it, I knew serving clients chocolate nurtured them emotionally. I’d read an article that said people crave chocolate, gorge on it in fact, when they have been let go by a lover, boss, or spouse. Weezie had told me that ingesting the food of the gods, as the Aztecs named it, produces an enzyme that creates sensations similar to sexual pleasure. I couldn’t believe that with Brian, something similar was all she got.

  I stomped back into the Farquhars’ house feeling like one of those cartoon characters with steam issuing from his ears. I wet a clean hand towel and slumped into one of the oak kitchen chairs. Compromises, I told myself as I scrubbed the area on my neck that Brian Harrington had smooched. I threw the towel down, stood up, and tried to think sweet.

  Tentatively, I reached into the cabinet where the fudge Julian had offered earlier was stored. I didn’t have two hours to make another whole mousse cake. Serving a dessert I had not made was a compromise, but it was one I couldn’t help. At least I hadn’t compromised myself.

  And I was thankful for Julian’s expertise, if not his temperament. I sampled a piece. Rich semisweet chocolate oozed between sun-dried cherries. T
he balance between luscious, smooth chocolate and chewy cherries was from heaven. I knew I could make two more desserts simultaneously. The fudge would balance well with brownies, and I could put together something with chocolate chips at the same time.

  I banged and searched and groped in the Farquhars’ cupboard for ingredients. I jumped sky-high when a cat wove between my legs. As if I didn’t have enough problems, I thought uncharitably.

  A few weeks before I moved in, good-hearted Adele had heard this feline meowing outside the fence by the pool. She had adopted the scrawny thing, and the general had named him Scout, somewhat prematurely, I thought. Now Scout, whose white, dark-and-light-brown coat meant that his ancestors were from Siam and Burma, jumped up on the counter to see what was up. He was a friendly fellow who had gone unclaimed by ads in the paper and calls to the veterinarian and Mountain Animal Protective League. Still too spooked by the neighborhood dogs to go back outdoors, Scout inspired great sympathy.

  Now Scout was determined to figure out what I was doing, and as long as he didn’t get any cat hairs in anything, I was willing to let him spectate. I made a crust for what would be a chocolate-chip bar and popped it in the oven. I let Scout be the inspiration for the brownies. I used chocolate in three forms, which was what you needed when times were tough. I wasn’t in my proper home. Neither was the cat. I did not have my usual bevy of ingredients. He probably cherished the memory of an old couch pillow he’d never see again. Marching on in the face of adversity, both of us.

  I finished the top layer of the chip bars and put them into the other oven. The brownies came out looking like a chocolate lunar surface. I knew I was supposed to let them cool, but who can do that? I cut out a corner and popped it into my mouth. The triple-chocolate concoction I’d come up with under the cat’s observation was extraordinarily good. To congratulate us both I dubbed them Scout’s Brownies. As the delicious dark stuff sparked the beginning of a heavenly shiver, the phone rang.

  “Hmmf?” I said with my mouth full.

  “Miss Goldy?” asked Tom Schulz. “You eating something? Must be awfully good if you didn’t finish it quick to answer the phone.”

  “Mmf,” I affirmed.

  “Let me know when you can talk.”

  I finished the brownie, but longed for another. To Schulz I said, “I can talk, thank you. What do you want?”

  “Uh-oh, she’s getting back to her old self.”

  I said, “Would you prefer to do this in writing?”

  “No, no,” he said, and I could hear him leaning away from the phone, reaching for something adrift on the sea of paper he called his desk. “Okay,” he began again, “you know a Sissy Stone? She’s at that Elk Park School, be a senior next year. Has a summer job at the library?” I mmhmmed noncommittally and he went on, “She was doing an apprenticeship with Philip Miller. Something they do their junior year. Learn about different careers and whatnot.” He clucked. “Guy who talked to her said she was pretty flaky.”

  “A veritable blizzard. But I think it’s an act. She just doesn’t want to talk when someone else more important might come along.”

  “Oh. Well,” Schulz went on, “she let on as how she was going out with that young fellow who lives at your place. I mean the Farquhars’ place. You might want to see if she knows more about the shrink. You know, in a friendly sort of way.”

  “I don’t get it. Why should I?”

  “Now, Goldy, ease up. You were the one who kept insisting Miller’s accident looked so strange. Ask a few questions, why don’t you? They’re doing a drug screen, part of the autopsy, you know . . .”

  I shuddered.

  “. . . but sometimes there’s some kind of personal thing going on that you can find out about in other ways. You’re not a suspect.” He didn’t need to add, this time. “You’re my friend, and I’m talking to you in confidence. Besides, with that 911 call, I’m worried. You know.”

  As usual, I didn’t.

  “So what’re you cooking?” he asked.

  I gave him a brief overview of Brian Harrington’s lustful schlep and the cake’s demise. Said I had just finished brownies named after the cat and was cooling chip bars.

  SCOUT’S BROWNIES

  1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

  3 ½ ounces best-quality unsweetened chocolate (recommended brands: Callebaut or Valrhona—available at Williams-Sonoma)

  3 tablespoons dark European-style unsweetened cocoa (recommended brand: Hershey’s Premium European-Style)

  1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (high altitude: add 2 tablespoons)

  ½ teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon salt

  4 eggs

  2 cups sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 cup chocolate chips (recommended brand: Mrs. Field’s)

  Preheat oven to 350° (high altitude: 375°). Melt butter with unsweetened chocolate in top of double boiler, stirring occasionally. Set aside to cool.

  Sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat eggs until creamy, then gradually add sugar, beating constantly. Add vanilla and cooled chocolate-butter mixture. Stir in dry ingredients just until combined. Spread batter in buttered 9- by 13-inch pan. Sprinkle chips over surface. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until center no longer jiggles when shaken. Cool, then cut into 32 pieces.

  Makes 32 brownies

  “Why don’t you name something after me?” His voice was so innocent and pleading, I pursed my lips in thought.

  He said, “Just nothing about pigs, please.”

  “Wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Glad you’re feeling better, Miss G.”

  I smiled, rang off, and christened the chocolate-chip bars Lethal Layers.

  When I finished I alternated thick brownies, gold-brown Lethal Layers, and Julian’s creamy dark squares in a stunning arrangement, if I do say so myself, atop one of Adele’s Italian wood trays.

  The dessert issue was under control. What was not settled was what I was going to wear. I hauled the last two boxes of food over to the Harringtons. Weezie had said she had a surprise for me. I hoped it was not her husband.

  It was not. The short (midthigh) décolleté black and white lace uniform that Weezie proffered left me speechless. It was sort of French maid via Frederick’s of Hollywood. If I dared to lean over to serve something, my cups would truly runneth over.

  I shook my head and mouthed the word, No.

  Weezie whined. She pouted. Said, “But I even checked your size!”

  “Mrs. Harrington,” I said when I finally recovered my breath. “I get paid to cook, serve, and clean up. Period.”

  She squinted at me. It made her look much older.

  “I thought I told you how important suggestion was with aphrodisiacs,” she said.

  “But not with clothing,” I said evenly. “When I describe the food, I’ll make suggestions that are verbal.” I was careful not to say oral.

  LETHAL LAYERS

  ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

  ½ cup dark brown sugar 1 cup all-purpose flour

  1 cup pecan halves

  2 eggs

  1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon baking powder additional all-purpose flour (see directions)

  1 cup chocolate chips (recommended brand: Mrs. Field’s)

  Preheat oven to 375°. In food processor, combine first 3 ingredients with metal blade until crumbly. This can also be done with 2 knives or a pastry cutter. Pat this crust into a buttered 9- by 13-inch pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Cool.

  When crust is cool, spread pecans

  evenly over surface. Beat eggs with brown sugar until thick. Add vanilla. Put salt and baking powder in bottom of ¼-cup measure; fill rest of measure with flour. Stir into egg mixture. Pour over crust. Sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over mixture. Bake at 375° for 20 minutes or until center is baked. Cool, then cut into 32 pieces.

  Makes 32 bars


  She said, “Oh, all right,” and then stalked out of the kitchen. I shook my head in resignation. As I was leaving, Brian Harrington popped out from around the corner. Had he been listening? I didn’t know and didn’t want to ask. He gave me a broad wink. I did my best imitation of raw egg white and slithered out.

  11.

  A day given to compromises, I reflected as I heated the broth for the dumplings. No caterer-as-a-centerfold uniform, no response to the Harrington Hustle, and the fee for tonight would pay Arch’s tuition for the first two weeks of summer school.

  Philip’s face floated back before me. Hungry? I had asked. Ravenous, he’d said.

  I pushed him out of my mind. I was almost done. The menu was finally set.

  APHRODISIAC DINNER FOR SIX

  OYSTERS ON THE HALF-SHELL WITH FRESH

  LEMONS AND LIMES

  SHRIMP DUMPLING SOUP

  SALAD OF BIBB LETTUCE GARNISHED WITH YELLOW

  PEAR-SHAPED TOMATOES, AVOCADOS,

  AND GRILLED MUSHROOMS, DIJON VINAIGRETTE

  CHILE RELLENO TORTA

  SONOMA BABY LAMB CHOPS BAKED WITH HERBS

  IN FOIL PACKETS

  PURÉE OF ZUCCHINI

  ASSORTED BREADS

  TRAY OF CHOCOLATE TREATS

  Only the flowers remained, I reflected as I stirred the soup. The delicate scent from the bubbling broth threaded through the air. Scent. Yes. On her list Weezie had detailed several flowers that by their smell or shape (I chose not to ask what that meant) would be appropriate for a centerpiece. I only remembered a couple of these, and the last thing I wanted was another harangue from Weezie on the subject of suggestion. The library was closed. Not that I was dying to talk to Sissy, despite Schulz’s admonition to find out what she knew about Philip. So I called it quits, phoned the florist, and hung up only after I had endured her shower of laughs at my request.