Turn Up the Heat (14 page)

“I heard about our waitress from dinner the other night. Doug told me. What a traumatic experience you’ve been through! How are you handling it?” Doug’s attitude had evidently rubbed off. Or maybe Terry was good at interpersonal relations on his own.

We talked for a few minutes about Leandra. Then I told Terry about my dinner with the chefs and about the archaic attitude toward women prevalent in the professional culinary world. “Listening to Digger made me want to scream!”

“So what are you going to do about it?” he asked calmly.

“What can I do about it? Change an entire profession? Yes. Find a job that consists solely of yelling at idiots about stupid behavior and forcing them to behave properly! That’s what I’m going to do about it.” There. Problem solved.

“Chloe, let’s back up and rethink matters. After all, you’re basing your view on the words of a few chefs. Their stories and experiences are not the final word on what it’s like for a woman in that profession. Some of what they said may be valid, but some of it may not. Don’t get carried away before you have a lot more information.”

I was silent for a moment. “Okay, that’s true,” I finally admitted.

“And what about everything you’ve learned in this internship you’ve had this year? It’s a program that educates people about workplace harassment, right?”

“Yes, and it’s a ‘field placement.’ Hasn’t Doug taught you that?” I laughed. Terry seemed as able as Doug would’ve been to talk down a fired-up social work student. I smiled, imagining Terry counseling me while shirtless and clad only in leather pants and hideous jewelry, his long hair teased high. “And I should figure out a way to educate both women and men in this crazy restaurant business and to teach tolerance and empowerment and equal rights and lots of other catchphrasey things!”

As I spoke the words, the realization hit me that I
was
fired up! And about something related to school! I
did
want to be a social worker—and not because Uncle Alan had forced me into graduate school, but because I passionately wanted to tackle the injustices of the culinary world. I felt so much like the Grinch discovering the joy of Christmas that I wondered whether a cartoon heart was growing inside me.

“There you go. I’ll tell Doug you called hoping to get cheat notes. Bye, Chloe.”

I hung up. I was stunned. After a year of whining and complaining my way through school, I finally understood why I’d picked social work, which had not, after all, been a random choice. Far from it! All along, lurking deep inside some hidden part of me, there had been this drive to save the world! Well, maybe just to
improve
the world. Okay, just the
culinary
world. But at least I was now on the right track. I laughed at what Josh would think when I began preaching the nonsexist, nondiscriminatory gospel of social work to Boston’s restaurant employees. I’d give seminars about supporting one another and appreciating diversity. Ha! Or maybe I’d teach women chefs and kitchen employees how to handle moronic men in their industry. While I was at it, I’d encourage egalitarian male chefs to train their less-than-perfect peers to behave like normal human beings! Naomi, my field placement supervisor, was a die-hard social worker who’d love my plan. She was dating the owner of a Newbury Street art gallery, Eliot, so maybe I could meet up with her in town one day soon. Feeling revitalized, I spent Friday night enthusiastically studying and writing.

After a few hours of work, I did take one break to check my e-mail in the hope that someone had responded to my plea for memories of Leandra. My only message, however, was from my friend Elise, who lived outside Los Angeles. While not working as a lawyer, Elise spent most of her time fruitlessly trying to spot celebrities. Her e-mail announced that her husband, Brandon, while picking up take-out Japanese food, had found himself next to Jeremy Piven. (Jeremy Piven and Elise, by the way, both enjoy vegetable tempura.) Brandon’s encounter wasn’t the brush with fame that Elise was hoping for, but she regarded it as a start.

Her e-mail went on to say that her husband, after getting two traffic tickets for minor violations, had received a guilt-inducing letter of admonishment from the state of California. According to the letter, the state understood that although Brandon
believed
himself to be a safe driver, his driving record indicated that he was, in fact, a
much worse driver
than most other Californians. The letter then switched to a tone of encouragement. The state of California, Brandon was assured, believed that he had it in him to change: to become a safe driver and to cease endangering the lives of others with his reckless behavior. While California hoped that he would change, the choice was his.

I loved it! The state of California had studied social work! Taking this positive approach was much better than simply handing out fines and appointing court dates. Yes, social work was the route for me! I might even begin to apply California’s method immediately in my efforts to elicit positive memories of Leandra:
You may think that you have nothing nice to say, but you could choose to put aside your residual hatred for the deceased and be a better person by digging deep and remembering Leandra’s better qualities. The choice is yours.

I slept well that night in spite of a convoluted dream in which I was carrying a monstrous picket sign outside Simmer while simultaneously chanting, “Hell no, we won’t go!” and stuffing my face full of foie gras. In the morning, I took a steaming shower, blew my hair straight, flatironed it until I smelled burning hair, and slugged down a cup of coffee. Then I checked my e-mail, my phone, and my cell for contributions to the memory book. Nothing. I hoped that if I ever had the misfortune to turn up dead in a fish truck, there’d be more material in my memory book than what I had for Leandra’s. Here it was, Saturday, with the memorial service only two days away, and the only memory I had so far was Josh’s forgettable one, and two uses of the word
bitch.
I resolved that I’d make one last pleading attempt to elicit memories from Simmer’s staff. If the effort failed, I’d just have to invent recollections and sign them Anonymous. I couldn’t bear to think of Gavin opening the memory book only to see blank pages or, worse, pages filled with stories of Leandra’s horrible behavior.

Later that morning, determined to complete the memory book to my own and Gavin’s satisfaction, I showed up at Simmer. When I was still in the dining area, even before I swung open the door to the kitchen, I could hear Josh yelling. I entered his domain just in time to see him dump a container of stainless whisks and ladles on to the floor, thus creating a metallic clatter that echoed off the walls. “Why don’t you take these, too? Go ahead!” He was screaming at nobody in particular. “Take whatever the hell you want! It’s not my restaurant, right?” Josh tossed his hands up in the air and looked around the room at his staff. Isabelle, Santos, and Javier were visibly shaken, but Snacker was trying to hold back a smile.

Josh caught my eye and dropped his hands. “I’m taking a break outside.” He went into Simmer’s back alley to cool off.

I’d heard many rumors about Josh’s temper but had rarely witnessed it myself. From what I’d heard, he’d calmed down quite a bit in the past few years. Before that, he’d been prone to explosions. Josh attributed his outbursts to a passion for his work and a desire for perfection in the kitchen. I appreciated and respected his dedication, but I still didn’t buy it as an excuse for throwing utensils.

I asked Isabelle what was going on. “I guess that some pieces of expensive cooking equipment are missing. Josh is upset. Obviously.”

“What’s missing? Does he think someone stole them?”

“A mandoline slicer and a really nice eight-inch chinois, which is like a strainer that we use for filtering stocks and sauces.” In spite of my anger that the equipment had been stolen, I loved hearing Isabelle show off what she’d learned. “Also, a stick blender and Josh’s favorite knife, a Wüsthof chef’s knife. At least that’s what he’s noticed so far. He knew about the blender and the mandoline a few days ago, but he just noticed the other things, and he’s freaking out. And yes, he definitely thinks someone stole them. And I’m afraid he probably thinks it’s me because of my past.”

I tried to reassure her. “I’m sure he doesn’t think it’s you. He’s just really upset right now. He was generally yelling at the world, not at you.”

“I didn’t take anything, but I know who did, Chloe,” Isabelle practically whispered.

“You do? Who?”

Isabelle leaned in close to me. “Blythe.”

“What? Why on earth would Blythe be stealing this random stuff? What does she need a chinois for?”

“It’s awful, but she’s selling the stuff on eBay. Stuff that she’s stealing from Gavin! After everything he put up with from Leandra, now he’s got people stealing kitchen equipment!”

“How do you know she’s selling all these things on eBay?”

“Josh lets me use the computer in his office sometimes to check my e-mail. I don’t have a computer of my own, but when I started here, he offered to let me use his if I wanted. I’d never had e-mail before or anything like that, so I was really grateful. He taught me how to set up an account and everything.” I was once again reminded of how wonderful my chef could be.

“Okay, so…?” I prompted her to continue.

“Oh, well, the other day when I was taking my break, I went to the office to make a phone call, and Blythe was in there on the computer. As soon as I walked in, she clicked the mouse a few times and then left. I didn’t think anything of it, but when I got off the phone, I thought I’d see if I had any e-mail. The browser was already open, just shrunk down on the side of the screen. And when I clicked it, her eBay page opened up with her listed as a seller, and it showed all the items she was auctioning off, including a couple of Simmer’s things.”

Holy crap!

“Poor Gavin, right? It’s so unfair to him!” she complained.

Isabelle really had to get over this Gavin thing. And if Blythe was stealing from the kitchen, Josh was the one who’d catch heat from Gavin. Everything that happened in the kitchen was Josh’s responsibility.

“Have you told Josh or Gavin about what Blythe is doing?”

“No! And you have to promise me you won’t, either! I don’t want to be the one ratting out my coworkers. I love this job, and I don’t want to screw it up. Please don’t say anything,” she begged me. The taboo on ratting out struck me as a legacy from Isabelle’s life on the streets.

I was facing my first real ethical dilemma as a social worker. If Isabelle was in any way my client, then I had to respect her confidentiality. And I did feel that she was my client. I had met her through a social service agency, and I had helped to set up an interview with Josh. I’d taught her how to go about finding a safe, affordable apartment. I regularly checked in with her and followed up on what we’d talked about. She trusted me to be professional. I couldn’t betray that trust. According to the social work code of ethics, I was to break confidentiality only if a client was a danger to herself or others, or if I had the client’s permission. The larceny at Simmer was unethical, but it wasn’t causing serious harm to anyone. Damn ethics.

Josh’s foul mood made this a bad time to talk to him about the problem, anyhow. He’d have to calm down before I’d even want to be around him. In any case, I needed to check eBay myself. As a novice computer user, Isabelle might have misinterpreted what she’d seen. Maybe Blythe had been searching eBay because she wanted to replace the missing items. And there was no point in bothering Gavin, who was in enough distress already about Leandra’s death and didn’t need to be confronted with a comparatively minor problem. Anyway, I had to respect Isabelle’s wish to be kept out of it. But if I stumbled on Blythe’s eBay merchandise myself, would the code of ethics allow me to tell Josh?

Isabelle interrupted my thoughts. “Oh, Chloe, did you hear? The police told Gavin how Leandra died. Everyone here just found out. She was strangled with the ties of one of Simmer’s aprons. There was evidence found on her body that matched the aprons. Isn’t that gross?” She wrinkled up her pale face in disgust.

A Simmer apron? Then Leandra hadn’t been killed by some random passerby in the alley. When I’d found her in Owen’s truck, she’d still been wearing a Simmer apron, so her own almost certainly hadn’t been the murder weapon. Who had access to the linens? Which employees? Probably all of them. Customers? Probably not. For some reason, I wondered about Belita. Belita hadn’t liked Leandra, but she was only one of a great many people.

“But she wasn’t raped or anything, thank God.” Isabelle looked embarrassed. “I mean, I know she was strangled, which is terrible, but I guess it’s good that something else bad didn’t happen to her before that. You know what I mean?”

“I do. I know what you mean.” I found myself disturbed and distracted by the news that something as innocuous as an apron had been turned into a murder weapon and that the murderer had been in Simmer. In
Josh’s
restaurant.

“I hate to bother you again with this, Isabelle,” I said, “but I really need some things to put in this memory book I’m doing. It will really mean a lot to Gavin.” As much as I didn’t want to encourage her crush on Gavin, I was desperate.

And the tactic worked. Isabelle said, “I guess so. You can write that she worked hard to make Gavin happy. That’s probably true enough.”

Finally! I had something!

“Thank you. I’m going to talk to Snacker now.”

“But you promise? You won’t throw me under the bus, right?”

I promised her that I wouldn’t say anything about Blythe. Again, it was funny to hear Isabelle use the language of the kitchen. Restaurant people always seemed to be talking about being “thrown under the bus” to refer to backstabbing, a phenomenon all too common in the restaurant world. Since knives suitable for stabbing were all over the place in kitchens, whereas buses were, of course, absent, I’d never understood the preference. Anyway, Isabelle now spoke like an insider. I silently wished her luck.