Cinco de Mayhem

I
wish to thank all those who helped and supported me in writing this book. Many thanks to my wonderful agent, Christina Hogrebe, and the Jane Rotrosen Agency for believing in the Santa Fe Café Mystery series and finding it such a wonderful home at William Morrow/HarperCollins. To Emily Krump, my fabulous editor, thank you so much for your insight and guidance. I am humbled to have an amazing team from HarperCollins behind me, including publisher Liate Stehlik, marketing director Shawn Nicholls, Eileen DeWald and Greg Plonowski in production, and publicist Emily Homonoff. Thanks also to the talented Tom Egner for the beautiful cover design.

I am forever grateful to my family, my most enthusiastic and steadfast supporters, and especially to my husband, Eric, for everything. My grandmother, Mary, will always be my model and inspiration.

Rita, Flori, and the crew, as well as Tres Amigas Café and the fighting food carters, are all flights of fiction. Like Rita, however, I am entranced by Santa Fe, a truly special place. Thanks to friends and acquaintances in New Mexico who have made it even more special.

I
don't know who came up with the expression “No crying over spilt milk.” Does anyone really get that emotional about milk? A fallen soufflé, however, now that's worthy of some weeping. I stared through the glass oven door, helpless as once-glorious pillows of cheesy, eggy deliciousness sank to the depths of their ceramic dish.

My friend Linda, the soufflé slayer, barely noticed. I couldn't help feeling peeved. Linda had seen the dish in the oven. She'd even said, “Oh good, you have the oven on.” Right before she jammed in two overstuffed trays of tamales and slammed the door with enough force to bring down my soufflé and any others rising in the greater Santa Fe area. As if for good measure, she stomped her sensibly shoed foot on the Saltillo-tile floor of Tres Amigas Café.

“I hate that man! I hate him!” she said, timing each word to a clomp of her tan loafer.

Such uncharacteristic sentiments from Linda shocked me from my soufflé sulk.

They shocked Linda too. She clamped her hands over her mouth before crossing herself and turning wide eyes to me. “Rita, forgive me. I should never say ‘hate' about another human being, especially on a Sunday.” Her shoulders quivered and her dark eyes welled with tears.

This was no time to fret about flattened French food. Taking Linda by the arm, I guided her to the main dining room, hoping the exuberant décor would cheer her up. How could it not? My elderly boss, friend, and occasional sleuthing partner, Flori—who was also Linda's mother and an overenthusiastic holiday decorator—had outdone herself for Cinco de Mayo. Garlands of colorful tissue paper cut in intricate patterns crisscrossed the ceiling, interspersed with piñatas, including a sombrero-wearing burro, a rainbow-striped poodle, various ruffled chile peppers, and a turquoise Eiffel Tower. Mexican flags poked from the condiment holders, atop vibrant vinyl tablecloths printed with tropical birds and flowers. Most decorators would have stopped there, if not way before. Not my octogenarian friend. Flori had added a half-dozen mannequins dressed as a mariachi band, complete with instruments and embroidered jackets. I hadn't asked Flori where, or why, she'd acquired the plastic people. I also couldn't tell whether some were male, female, or extraterrestrial. What I did know was that the trumpet player's vacant stare creeped me out.

I caught his unseeing eyes, the black orbs floating in pools of empty white space. Firming up my
grip on Linda, I headed for a table by the window. Besides being far from the trumpet player, this spot had a lovely view of our outdoor dining patio, recently reopened for spring. Glancing out, I admired the metal tables with their fresh coat of glossy turquoise paint and the lilac hedge, sagging with blooms of deepest purple.

Linda sank into a chair. Her hair, straighter and darker brown than mine, was salted with silver and skimmed her shoulders in a blunt cut matched by thick bangs. The cut was new, and the bangs, according to Linda, were regretted. She scraped them from her forehead, staring down at the psychedelic tropical forest on the tablecloth.

“It's Napoleon, isn't it?” I asked, adding a hefty dash of sarcasm and eye rolling to the name. I mean,
really,
who changes their name to not only a singular moniker, but one so singularly pompous? Superstar singers, I supposed. Or supermodels, or—

“Yes, Napoleon,” Linda said, confirming my guess with a weary sigh.

My eye roll dove into a frown.
Or vain star chefs
like Napoleon, née plain old Noel Thomas
. If pompousness could literally inflate, he'd be as puffed as an uppity blowfish. It didn't help that the Food Network recently featured Napoleon's casual French bistro on its “best bites” segment and that the walls of his fine-dining establishment practically sagged with awards. Or, I begrudgingly acknowledged, that his food was so darned good. No, more than good. Napoleon made swoonworthy sauces and appetizers almost too pretty to eat. The trouble was, the big-time chef was also a massive bully.

Napoleon's mean moves were the stuff of legend—and nightmares—among local food workers, who told the tales in hushed tones, nervously glancing over their shoulders. I'd heard various renditions of the time Napoleon bankrolled a friend's restaurant, only to take control and shutter the place. Then there was the head chef he fired for cooking a single steak to well done, and the night he pink-slipped an entire wait staff during the dinner service. Rumor had it that he even booted his own mother from their family's former restaurant.
His own mother!

In my cooking career, I've misjudged medium-rare. I've dropped soup on customers' laps, rolled burritos onto fancy footwear, and rung up thousand-dollar charges for coffee on my eternal nemesis, the cash register. Mistakes happen in fast-paced, high-pressure restaurant settings. I felt for Napoleon's victims, especially his mother. But what really rankled me was his new food-cart enterprise, Crepe Empire. So far, the empire consisted of a single cart, but that was enough. From its helm, Napoleon was laying siege to Santa Fe's central Plaza, forcing out longtime vendors like Linda, who operated Tía Tamales. Linda was around my age now, in her early forties, when she got into the tamale business. Initially, she sold her homemade goodies from a cooler out of the trunk of her car. She became such a success that her eldest son built her a cart, which has been her main source of income since her husband passed away several years ago.

My hard-working friend swiped at her bangs
again. “I am sorry I got upset, Rita, really I am. It's okay. Everything's okay. No worries.”

Had Linda just said “no worries”? Now I
was
worried, and I knew Linda must be too. Of course she was. Worrying was in Linda's nature. She viewed trips to the walk-in fridge as brushes with hypothermia. She murmured prayers before stepping into crosswalks, and fretted that her friends and family faced imminent dangers from the Southwestern droughts, wildfires, and pine beetles, to say nothing of the bubonic plague striking prairie dogs. Usually, I tried to brush off her concerns so as not to heighten them in her and myself. Not this time.

“You don't need to apologize,” I assured her. Napoleon was the one who should ask for forgiveness, not that he ever would. Preparing myself for fresh irritation, I asked, “What's he doing now?”

Linda slumped in her chair. Not for long. The wooden seats at Tres Amigas feature hand-carved sunbeams, flowers, and sparrows, all punishers of poor posture.

Shifting upright, away from sparrow beaks, Linda said, “The usual. Napoleon got Crystal's juice stand shut down. He had a food inspector come by and question her permit. And he chased away some nice guy playing his guitar, and that funny man who dresses like an old-timey woodsman. You know, the older gentleman who walks around in the fur hat and the hide cloak?”

I knew the woodsman. I wasn't worried about him. Anyone who wanders around town in
old-timey trapper attire had to be pretty thick-skinned. I waited for Linda to go on.

She wrung hands toughened by decades of food work. In a small voice, she said, “Crepe Empire took my spot.”

Now I felt like stomping. Everyone knows that Linda's humble yellow cart stands at the southwest corner of the Plaza, diagonally across from the Five and Dime. It's featured in guidebooks and tourism brochures, and visitors and locals alike flock to “Auntie Tamales” for quick, tasty snacks. Even pooches pull their owners to Linda's corner, lured by the free dog biscuits she hands out.

“Why can't he set up somewhere else?” I asked, though I already knew. Because he was a bully, that's why. As a kid, Napoleon probably swiped his classmates' lunch money and stole their desserts.

Linda's shoulders rose and slumped like my soufflé. Her bangs sagged to the middle of her forehead. This time she didn't bother to push them aside.

“It's Sunday,” she said. “I don't usually work a full day anyhow, but the weather is so nice, and I like to feed folks getting out of church. Of course, I told Napoleon we could share the corner, but when he set up nearby, all he did was taunt me.”

I bit my tongue and the
why would you do that,
threatening to burst out. If Linda had a fault, it was that she was too nice.

She shook her head as if baffled by the outcome of her generosity. “If someone came to my stand, he'd yell mean things about tamales. Horrible things. ‘Stiff old corn gruel,' he called them. ‘Mush in a husk.' I couldn't stay and listen to those
awful words, Rita. I told him he wasn't being fair or nice. He laughed. He says he can do what he wants. He says the mayor backs him too. That the city needs modern carts, not my old wooden pull-cart. He says tourists like crepes.” Her voice had risen to a panicked pitch. “People do, don't they? They like crepes!”

Guilt made me avoid her stricken gaze. I was one of those people. I liked crepes. Scratch that. I loved crepes and all sorts of French food. Back in my culinary school days, I took special courses on French sauces and pastries, and before moving to Santa Fe, I worked in a Midwest version of a French restaurant. My current culinary loyalty, however, was to the wonderful New Mexican fare we served up at Tres Amigas. And to my friends.

That's why I'd stopped frequenting Napoleon's cart. I'd gone cold turkey. No more delicious buckwheat galettes oozing melted Gruyère cheese. No more lemon crepe, tart and sweet, sparking with fire-glazed sugar. Or the chocolate-hazelnut delight with whipped cream and a brandied cherry on top. Oh, and the brie and tomato with Dijon mustard and the exquisite duck confit and . . .
No!
I mentally slapped myself.
No more forbidden culinary thoughts!
Supporting my friends meant not supporting a bully.

But other than foregoing French treats, what could I do? Confront Napoleon? I might fantasize about running Napoleon off the Plaza, but in reality, confrontation makes my hands tingle and my voice rise into perky chatter. I fell back to my usual comfort strategy. Food. I offered Linda iced tea and freshly flattened soufflé.

Linda stirred not one, not two, but three teaspoons of sugar into her tea. I watched with increasing concern. My friend was not herself. The Linda I knew avoided sugar, wary of tooth decay, and probably links to climate change and the prairie dog plagues to boot. She glugged her sugar tea, taking down half the glass before trying the soufflé.

“Delicious,” she said. “What is it? One of those Spanish tortillas, the omelet kind? Maybe I should make those, like they do at that tapas restaurant you like. Tapas are trendy, aren't they?” Her hopeful look faded. “I'm too old for trendy.”

“Sixty isn't old,” I chided. Nor was forty-one, as I kept reminding myself, or even eighty-one, as Flori told anyone who dared offer her a senior discount, which she always took after delivering a good chiding about ageism. I continued with my perky pep talk. “And of course you should keep making your tamales. People come to Santa Fe for history and culture and that's all wrapped up in tamales. When we put them on special, we sell out before lunch. I can never guess which will go faster, the green chile and cheese or the red chile pork with black beans.”

Linda smiled weakly. “The green chile is my favorite. That's why I love this funny baked omelet of yours.”

I admitted I'd been trying for a soufflé, leaving out Linda's part in its flop. Heaven knows she already felt bad enough.

“I'm working on a new recipe for Cinco de Mayo,” I said. “Gotta love the holidays!” Perky isn't just my confrontation response, it's my go-to reaction for combating glum too.

“Sure,” Linda said, not at all perkily. She took another bite and chewed slowly, assessing. “I see. Mexican and French together in one dish, and the hot chile comes out the winner. Clever, Rita.”

I smiled, glad that Linda got my attempt at Cinco de Mayo symbolism. Linda's a native New Mexican, with a family tree growing here for generations and distant roots to Spain and Old Mexico. She understands the regional history and the distinctions among Mexican, New Mexican, and American festivities and foods.

I'll never be considered a true local. I'm originally from Illinois, and my three and a half years here make me a newcomer in the eyes of longtime Santa Feans. That's okay with me. The important thing is that I feel at home, more than anywhere else I've lived. It's hard to explain, especially to my mother. Mom keeps hoping I'll move back to my “real home,” Bucks Grove, Illinois, a land of corn and casseroles and flat expanses.

Mom contends there's no reason for me
not
to move back. I can cook anywhere, she points out. Plus, I'm divorced. Less than a year ago I officially reclaimed my maiden name, Lafitte, after splitting from local son and philandering police detective Manny Martin. I usually grant Mom these points because I know she'll then wreck her argument by citing aspects of Santa Fe she dislikes but I love. It's so “different,” she'll say, unintentionally repeating Santa Fe's proud nickname, The City Different. Mom also objects to the altitude (high), the weather (dry), and the walls (adobe), which she says make her claustrophobic. And don't even get Mom started on hot chiles and beans for
breakfast. I counter with the special light, the gorgeous sunsets, and the fabulous food and art. My winning point, however, is my daughter. I can't rip Celia away from her father and high school, just as I can't tear myself away from my home and friends.

Linda turned her face to the ceiling. “I love Mama's decorating for Cinco de Mayo. I haven't done any special decorations for my cart yet, but I did make chicken
mole
tamales. It's a special black
mole
with five kinds of dried Mexican chiles and dark chocolate and pumpkin and sesame seeds. I started selling them today and people seemed to really like them until . . .”

Until Napoleon chased her off.

Linda continued on the subject of tamales. “I made a few with habaneros, but I decided not to sell them. I worried that someone really sensitive to chile heat might eat one and have trouble breathing. Mama says I worry too much. She says the hotter the better.”