Why Is Murder On The Menu, Anyway?. Stevi Mittman

Howard as we navigate the various obstacles that the gâteau au chocolat wasn’t wasted on me.

      He pulls a laugh from his inexhaustible supply as we take our seats, and he wonders aloud how it is that I can remember the French names only for desserts or things that involve chocolate.

      “Chocolat,” I correct, saying it with what I hope is a convincing French accent.

      He waves away my attempt at being seductive and tells me that I should have been there for the practice run. “Cockle Bruschetta,” he says, like cockles were likely to be the surprise ingredient they’d have the chefs use tonight. “Then a choucroute Royale Alsacienne, done not with sauerkraut but with a pickled mushroom…” He closes his eyes like he’s having sex and it is too perfect to describe.

      At least, I think he’d close his eyes during sex. It’s not something I know firsthand.

      “And just this morning I had to go on a scavenger hunt for tamarind paste,” he tells me as I settle into my seat and take in our surroundings. “Took me until nearly noon to find it in this little Indian spice place on Broadway down on the South Shore.”

      “The Taj? The one next to The Steak-Out?” I ask. I remind him that was where I was at lunchtime, and it was where I discovered the murdered man I’ve already told him about.

      He stops helping me off with Bobbie’s shrug and asks me if I’m sure. I tell him it’s not the sort of thing that one forgets. And then I could swear he shudders.

      “You all right?” I ask and he gets all defensive, like I’ve impugned his manhood or something.

      “I suppose you talked to the police,” he says. I tell him that yes, they interviewed my mother and me. But, because the chip on his shoulder is the size of Shea Stadium when it comes to Drew Scoones, I don’t mention just who “they” were.

      “Well, luckily you didn’t see anything,” he says, slipping out of his jacket and carefully folding it behind him on the chair.

      “Just a dead man,” I say a bit sarcastically, since he seems to think that watching someone cook a fancy French meal trumps discovering a dead body.

      I could see his argument if we were at least going to taste the results. And if they were chocolate.

      He suggests that we leave our stuff on our seats and go backstage to see his friend Nick. We exit our row in the opposite direction and, after convincing the powers that be that we are vital to the survival of Earth, we are permitted to go behind the scenes to look for Nick and Madison Watts, owners of Madison on Park. Howard has described Nick in detail, but has never even mentioned Madison before tonight, so I am taken aback when he allows himself to be greeted with kisses on both cheeks by an elegant thirtysomething-just-younger-than-me woman who seems as surprised to see me as I am to see her kissing the man I’ve come in with.

      She’s dressed all in black, like, well, like a black swan. Or like Mrs. Danvers, from Rebecca with Joan Fontaine. And let me tell you, if I were crumbs, I’d know better than to stick to her outfit. You know how interviewers always ask stupid questions like, “If you were a flower, what kind of flower would you be?” Well, Madison Watts would be a rare orchid that you know would cost thousands of dollars and would die if you looked at it wrong. And it would be your fault, not the flower’s.

      Or maybe a Venus flytrap.

      Something intimidating.

      Yes, if I had to find one word to describe Madison Watts, it would be intimidating.

      “Madison,” Howard says, and my ordinarily warm, garrulous date has suddenly gone cold and distant. “I’d like you to meet Teddi Bayer.”

      “Your…?” Madison says, as if daring him to introduce me as his girlfriend. She waits, not giving him an out.

      “Nick around?” he asks instead.

      Madison eyes me critically while I try not to stare at her perfect complexion and huge gray eyes. I struggle to remember if I put on lipstick before Howard picked me up and figure it’s probably gone by now, anyway. I am wearing one of Bobbie’s crocheted tops with the matching shrug from last year and a pair of Ann Taylor pants which, I admit, are a good five years old. I feel mismatched, underdressed, out of style and fat. Where are this woman’s Hadassah arms? If Nick is such a great cook, why doesn’t her figure show that she ever, ever eats?

      I’d credit Madison with an uncanny ability to reduce me to shame and self-loathing, but heck, nearly anyone can do it. It’s not like I don’t try. I’m sure I look good when I look in the mirror at home, or at the very least, good enough. And then I get where I’m going, see someone wearing the right thing, someone whose hair looks like she just stepped out of the salon, someone whose makeup isn’t smudged under her eyes, whose shoes apparently don’t cripple her feet, and all I want to do is crawl back into bed.

      With the slightest hint of an accent, Madison, who looks like she’s primped all afternoon when I know she had to be preparing for the show, asks, “I know you, don’t I?” Those exquisite gray eyes of hers narrow slightly, as if she’s seeing through my disguise as a socially-acceptable, upwardly-mobile person who could pay for her own ticket and dinner if she had to. Which, luckily, I don’t.

      I tell her that I don’t think we’ve ever met at the same time that Howard tells her that I am a decorator. “She’s doing a lot of commercial work,” he says. “Redecorating restaurants…” He pauses like he’s suddenly put two and two together and gotten Reese’s peanut butter cups. “You two should talk.”

      My heart thumps wildly in my chest. Doing Madison on Park would be quite the notch in my glue gun. I can almost see the wheels turning in Madison’s head, too, and I smile at her like it’s an open invitation for her to watch the same process in mine—as long as we come to the same conclusion.

      “You look so familiar to me,” she says, taking a step or two back and eyeing me from head to toe. “Have you been to the restaurant?”

      I tell her I’ve been dying to come, but I’ve been so very busy. And poor, I think, but I don’t tell her as much.

      “She’s doing The Steak-Out,” Howard tells her and we all exchange one of those oh, right, looks.

      “You weren’t there today? When it happened, were you?” Madison asks, putting her hand on my arm as if ready to console me if I was.

      And I admit that, unfortunately, I was.

      “So sad about Joe,” she says as someone official-looking approaches her and she has to excuse herself to see to something about the show. “We’ll talk later,” she says to me, and maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I get the sense she is going to let me do the restaurant.

      “‘So sad about Joe,’” Howard mimics as he looks around, I suppose for Nick. “She hated him just as much as the rest of us.”

      I’m about to ask him how he came to know someone from the Health Department when he brightens and points toward the back of the stage. “Look! There’s Nick!”

      Nick, who even with a chef’s hat on his head only comes up to Howard’s chin, pumps my hand until my arm goes numb. He is a cherub of a man, a little too chubby, a little too short, a little too bald to be considered good-looking, or even cute. But his eyes sparkle when he sees us and his pudgy hands clasp mine in a warm welcome.

      “You’re here! I’m so glad! Now go away!” he says cheerily. “I must set up le mise en place.” I have no idea what that is, but I don’t dare ask Howard because he’s probably already told me three times and because if he tells me again I still won’t care. “They’re going to tell them the ingredients fifteen minutes before they’re supposed to start cooking,” Howard tells me.

      “Yeah,” I say. I am getting testy because all we’ve talked about is food, on every monitor is food, and I’m getting hungrier by the minute. I still can’t believe we get to watch and not sample. “Like cockles.”

      Howard,