Mumbo Gumbo (25 page)

The crowded party scene was warming up. Most of the guests had, by that time, made their way through the buffet line. Many were seated at the clusters of tables positioned around the Kitchen Arena set, enjoying their dinner by candlelight. Wes had scattered dozens of chunky white block candles around the tables and their warm glow made the large set seem cozy and intimate.

At the serving table, two of our waiters were helping
the last of the guests. I was reassured to see there seemed to be more than enough oysters Bienville left. More than enough is exactly the quantity we caterers aim for. The oysters had been baked on the half shell and then topped with a sherry-flavored béchamel sauce mixed with sautéed chopped shrimp, shallots, and garlic. Out in the mobile kitchen, one of my chefs was baking them in batches, to keep the dish that was named for the second colonial governor of Louisiana fresh. For those who stayed away from seafood, we were offering grilled andouille sausages and Cajun dirty rice. We also had platters of Southern-fried chicken. For dessert, three chefs were out front making our version of bananas Foster we called Mad Banana Crepes.

“Oh, Mad,” Holly said, walking up to me. “Your cell phone has been beeping.” She handed it to me. Holly had borrowed it a while back and I’d completely forgotten about it.

“Did you answer it?” I asked.

“Yeah. A guy called you. Maybe two or three times. Said his name was Karl. Said he met you at the Swine Bar.”

“What?”

“That’s what he said. Where is that Swine Bar? On Sunset?”

“I don’t know anyone named…” Wait a minute. At Pierce College. The farm manager. I had given him my card.

“Not the Swine Bar,” I said, laughing at Holly. “The swine
barn.
I met this guy in a barn, Hol. With pigs.”

“Whatever,” she said, shaking her head. “He left this number.” She handed me a slip of paper.

I moved away from the diners to a quieter spot and
dialed. The cell phone reception was spotty inside the soundstage, but I got enough of a signal to hear the call go through. I counted the rings. After the third, I heard a man’s voice. “Hello.”

“Hello. This is Madeline Bean. Is this Karl?”

“Sort of,” the voice said.

That stopped me. I mean, either you are or you aren’t. “Are you the guy I met at Pierce College?”

“Yes,” he said. “You gave me your business card, remember?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling back on firmer footing. “I’m in the middle of a pretty loud party right now,” I explained, “and I—”

“I know,” said Karl. “I’m here, too.”

“Wait. You’re at the
Food Freak
party? Right now?” I swung around and scanned the crowd. Had Susan invited her friend from the farm to our wrap party?

“No, but I’m here on the lot. Look, I need to talk to you,” Karl said. “Could we meet up somewhere a little more private?”

“How about outside?” I suggested. “In the mobile kitchen. Know where that is? It’s a big orange-and-white tent.”

“I’ll find it. I have a surprise for you.”

A
surprise? I thought about what sort of surprise the good-looking farm manager could have for me as I edged my way through the crowd on the dance floor and then walked to the back of the soundstage building. Perhaps he was going to suggest some summer classes in animal husbandry. I pushed open the heavy stage door and exited. In the night air, I smelled the smoke of a few nearby cigarette fiends, outside catching up on their nicotine. They said hi. Then I turned the corner and headed for Wes’s mobile kitchen.

The smell of grilled sausage and Cajun spices greeted me at the door to the tent. Several of our catering staff were cleaning up and taking breaks. Wes was there, having a glass of champagne, and when he saw me enter, he picked a half-empty bottle of Crystal out of a bucket of ice, gesturing. I nodded. I was ready to relax and I sighed as I watched Wes pour.

“What’s new in there?” Wes asked as I took a sip of champagne.

I looked at my watch. “Show is still on for another half hour. And dinner is going very well. It’s a great wrap party, Wes.”

“What I like to hear,” he said, smiling.

“I’m supposed to meet a guy,” I said. “Someone I met out at Pierce College.”

“That the one?” Wes asked, looking back over my shoulder.

At the entrance to the tent stood Karl, the guy from the farm. Next to him was Susan. Just what I had imagined.

“See you in a bit,” I told Wes and then walked over to Susan and Karl. “Want something to drink?”

“No thanks, Maddie.” Susan smiled at me shyly.

“Karl, I presume,” I said, turning to the guy I remembered from the college, the one who’d evicted me from the pigpens. I noticed that he was still packing some nice muscles under his sweater.

“Well, actually,
not
Karl,” Susan said. “Tim.”

That would be the absolute last time I was ever tricked by an embroidered name on a uniform shirt. Honestly.

“This is
Tim
? Tim Stock?”

“Yes. Hi.” Tim held out his hand to shake mine.

Well, well, well. I finally got to meet the man whose office had provided me with such a fine assortment of new experiences. Or, perhaps I should rephrase that. We’d already met, but I had never suspected who he really was. He’d been out at the swine barn wearing a shirt sporting the name “Karl,” so I’d never imagined he didn’t belong there, right along with the hay and the mud. I recalled the note Susan had left for Tim on the subscription card in the
Gourmet
magazine—“6
A.M.
Thursday.” Apparently, Tim was there at the appointed time after all.

“Nice to see you again, Tim. Finally. Well, I guess you heard what happened tonight.”

“We heard,” Susan said. “Is it all true? Is Artie going to jail?”

“I wouldn’t put money on it,” I said. “But the men who have been threatening Tim are as good as gone. There are a number of people who are telling the police all they know, including Artie. Those drug dealers will not be bothering anyone for a long, long time.”

Susan buried her head in Tim’s shoulder and he squeezed her in a big bear hug. They were just so darn cute, those two.

“So I guess you are free to go home,” I said.

“Thanks, Madeline,” Tim said, meeting my eyes. “Susan told me everything you have been doing for her. You’ve been an incredible friend. I don’t know how you managed this, but we are truly grateful.”

“We’re moving to England,” Susan said. “Isn’t that crazy? I can’t believe it, but we’re going to take the boys and move.”

“You can take the dogs?” I asked.

“I was worried, but then Tim figured out the perfect plan. They have a new program. We get the boys microchipped, blood-sampled, and vaccinated by our own vet, and once we get an all-clear at six months, Niko, Khailo, and Thorn can travel with us without the quarantine. Tim knows everything.”

“I knew Susan wouldn’t leave the boys,” Tim said. “And I couldn’t leave them either.”

“Tim’s going to buy us a country house with a patch of pasture.”

“For Susan’s flock,” Tim said, looking at Susan like he couldn’t believe his luck.

“About the money I found in the cookbooks,” I said, “my partner, Wesley, has been keeping the fifty thousand dollars in his safe and—”

Tim held up his hand and interrupted. “No. Please. I could never keep that money. I wish I’d never had anything to do with it.”

Susan met his eyes and Tim sighed.

“Would you do us one more favor?” Tim continued, his voice calmer. “Could you turn it all over to one of the police investigators?”

“I know just the one,” I said. Cop cheats on me with his own freaking non-ex-wife and I hand him the fifty grand to seal his case. That’s just the kind of good-natured woman I am.

“Thanks, Maddie,” Susan said.

It would be safer this way, I knew. Once the drug gang heard the cops had confiscated the payoff money, they’d lay off and leave Tim alone. He and Susan would be free of it all.

“So we’ll have a little less to start our dream on,” Susan said, not sounding in any way put out. “I can work a little. I’ll sell some of my fleece and hold dyeing workshops.”

“And I’ll keep writing questions, part time, while I work on my book,” Tim said. “I know a guy who is starting an interactive quiz game on the Internet, so I can work from home.”

Maybe it wasn’t as ideal as their original dream, but, honestly, what ever is? It got them out of Hollywood and out of game shows. They’d be fine.

“Look,” Tim said, “another thing. That night you were hit on the head…”

“You know about that?”

Tim nodded. “I was in the hidden bedroom, right next door. I heard a noise, which must have been you falling down. Then it got really quiet. I was worried, so I opened the bookcase and there you were. On the
floor. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I was still in hiding, but…”

“So you were the one who picked me up? You carried me over to the sofa?”

Tim nodded. “I wish I had been able to do more. You seemed to be okay, just knocked out.”

“Did you see who did it? Do you know who attacked me?”

“I’m not sure…” Tim shook his head.

“Tim thinks it was Artie,” Susan said. “He saw Artie hanging around when he should have been up in his own office. Luckily, Artie didn’t see Tim. But we thought you should know.”

“Artie attacked me?”

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “Maybe he was worried about what else I’d uncovered about his dirty deals and thought he’d look around my office. He probably figured the office would be empty that late at night. But there you were. He probably thought you were such an overachiever, you’d be working there all night.”

“So that angry, bitter egomaniac just decided to bash me over the head and get on with his errand? What a frightening little man.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tim said.

“Food Freak,”
I muttered.

“Great job, eh?” Tim asked, and smiled at me.

“I want to do something special for you,” Susan said, holding my hand. “We would like you to come out to England next spring. We should be settled by then. Tim’s going to go up to London to do his research on day trips, and I’ll be home tending my sheep.”

“Will you teach me how to dye wool?” I asked, smiling at her.

“Of course. We’ll have a great time. But I want to do something more. I want to name our first lamb after you. Our first British-born lamb.” Susan’s eyes were bright behind her tiny wire rims. “Madilamb Bean.”

I was speechless.

“And if there is anything I can ever do to help you,” Tim said, “like if you need something researched…” He laughed. “But now that you are a game-show writer, I guess you can do that for yourself. You have all the questions and answers you need.”

“I guess the only answer I’m missing is what really happened to Quentin Shore. Do you have any idea what he was doing at your house the night of the fire?”

Tim looked down. “I can’t believe he’s dead. I can’t explain how horrible I feel. Like it happened on my property, so I’m responsible. Like I should have warned everyone in the universe to stay away. But I had never invited Quentin over to my house in my life. I didn’t even realize he knew where I lived. I cannot imagine what he was doing there that night.”

“Tim feels a lot of guilt, Maddie,” Susan said quietly.

“Of course I feel guilty. While Quentin was being murdered, the killer thought he was killing me.”

Susan turned to me. “But Artie made Tim promise not to tell anything to anybody. Not even to me. That’s why Tim dropped out of sight. And for the past week he’s been living with my sheep.”

“Excuse me,” I said, shocked at the revelation that had just hit me. Now I remembered what Artie had said. Looking at everything from a new angle, it had
all suddenly come into focus. “I’ve got to see someone right away.” And before they could question my incredibly rude behavior, I ran out of the tent.

Inside the soundstage, “
Food Freak
Revenge: The Final Food Fight” was on all the video screens, playing down its final minutes on the air. The celebrity judges were being interviewed. Four giant shots of J.Lo’s perfect complexion filled the monitors.

I found the woman I was looking for sitting alone. The candles on her table had burned hollows under their wicks. Pools of clear melted wax shined under the dancing flames.

“Fate,” I said. “May I join you?”

“Why not?” Fate Finkelberg turned to watch the last moments of
Food Freak
on the monitors.

“Quite a show,” I said.

“Not bad,” Fate said, not turning to look at me. “Howie is getting upstaged by that awful Tobey Maguire, but that’s what we get for letting a hack like Pete Steele direct. Next season he is gone.”

“I guess you heard that Artie is talking with the police,” I said.

That got a quick glance from Fate. “So?”

“So, he’s telling them everything. He’s cooperating fully. I think they’ll let him off with just a hand slapping if he gives them what they want to lock up the really bad guys.”

“I haven’t followed it closely,” Fate said, waving a hand.

“Of course, he told them he knew there was going to be a hit ordered last week. He knew it because he was coerced into putting Tim Stock’s address out on the air. In code. You knew about that, right?”

On the big screen, Chef Howie was in a close-up.

He was telling us we’d get the judges’ final verdicts after these commercials. With only a Subaru ad on the screens, Fate turned back to face me. “I didn’t know anything,” Fate said, her expression like stone.

“Sure you did,” I said. “You knew that some very dangerous men were going to be stalking anyone who was found at 12226 Lemon Grove Drive, because you were in Artie’s office when he was telling Tim to stay away. You overheard it all. Artie didn’t realize how clever you are. He always underestimated the women he worked with, didn’t he?”

Fate continued to stare at me. She said nothing.

“Then,” I went on, “you found out about Chef Howie and his romantic fling.”

Fate flinched at that word.

“So you had Howie followed. You hired a private investigator. You told me all about it, remember?”

“So what? That means nothing.”

“No? I suppose you didn’t finally get a report from that investigator. A report that proved your husband was just as unfaithful as you had suspected. And your PI wouldn’t be able to provide the police with a copy of the photos he made?” Fate looked extremely uncomfortable but I pressed on. “So, then you’re all right.”

“What do you want from me?” Fate hissed. “What did I ever do to you?”

“Not that much, I guess. But then, you really didn’t have the time. You were too busy sending poor Quentin Shore on an errand over to Tim’s house. Perhaps you suggested he might be the one to take over as head writer on
Food Freak
next year? He just needed to do you one favor, I bet you told him. Like get some records that were being stored in Tim Stock’s garage.
Go after the show airs on Wednesday night. Don’t worry. No one will be home. Just wait there for you.” I looked at Fate. “Does any of this ring a bell?”

“Shut up. Shut up! None of this is true. You’re insane.”

On the big screen,
Food Freak
had resumed. It was time for the final announcement of the show’s new champion chefs. We were about to learn who would win the fairy-tale chateau in France. This was the part I had missed last time.

“Tell me what you want.” Fate’s harsh voice rasped. “Money?”

“Shh,” I said to her, holding up my hand. All around us the cast and crew were quieting down to watch the final moments of the show. “I want to see this.”

Fate was growing more and more agitated. She reached out her hand to grab my wrist and in the process knocked over a candle. Hot wax spilled over the white damask tablecloth and a few drops splattered on Fate’s arm. “Ahh!”

“Shh,” I chided.

“So you know everything. Did you know I’m the one who turned Tim’s office upside down? I had to figure out what Artie was talking about. He told Tim not to go near his house, but I had to know why. I used my key to get into the office while you were out at that meeting. I found the newspaper article he had clipped about that woman’s murder. I looked through all the old scripts and I figured it out. Those stupid recipes. They were sending out hit men and the best part was, the killers didn’t even know who they were intended to murder. How could I let such a perfect opportunity slip away?”

I wasn’t looking at Fate, but I was listening. Her confession almost made me miss the crowning moment of the show, when the judges awarded the grand prize by a vote of two to one to the Baker sisters. The winner’s theme music blasted out over the speakers and everyone at the party cheered. The three Baker siblings, standing near the Kool-Aid bar and enjoying their victory once again, came forward and took a little bow.

“And I’m going to get away with it,” Fate told me. “I will deny everything. All you have is a lot of speculation and there is no way to prove it. So go ahead. Pat yourself on the back, Maddie. You’re a smart girl. Now you will just have to live with knowing what you know and still having nothing you can do about it. When you think of it that way, not everything is worth the pain to figure it out, is it, smart girl?”