Simmer Down (6 page)

Oh, yes. While making her feel guilty and ashamed.

I drove to her apartment complex and planned my words.

“Right here.” Hannah pointed to a posh four-story building surrounded by a wrought-iron gate. I put the car in park.

“Look, Hannah,” I started, finally calm, “I know you had a horrible night, and I apologize for the way I acted. But how would you feel if your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend said the things that you’ve said to me? Probably not very good. I haven’t done anything to you that warrants this kind of treatment. It is unacceptable and needs to stop.” There. Simple and to the point. I had set my boundaries and made it clear that they were not to be crossed—just as Naomi had taught me to advise our sexual harassment hotline callers!

Hannah stared at me, expressionless.

“So,” I continued with a little less confidence, “I understand that there can be leftover emotions from past relationships, but, um…” Why was she staring at me like that? “You see…Josh…Josh has moved on from the past and is looking forward to the future, you know, with me, and…”

“You have parsley in your hair,” announced Hannah, reaching out and plucking a green leaf off my head. “Tell Josh to call me.” She collected her bags and slammed the door before strutting up the walkway.

I was beginning to doubt that running interference between Josh and his ex had been worth the embarrassment. But I had to keep trying: until Oliver’s murder was solved, Hannah would keep trying to persuade Josh to rescue her from supposed police persecution. The ideal solution to the murder would, of course, consist of absolute proof of Hannah’s guilt. But even if someone else turned out to be the murderer, the police would stop questioning Hannah, and she’d lose her excuse for playing on Josh’s sympathy.

I drove a few blocks and then used my cell phone to call Adrianna, who was the only person capable of preventing me from phoning Josh at work, demanding to know why he’d ever gone out with a psychopath, and threatening that if he actually cooked for her, I’d shred his Gordon Hammersley cookbooks to paper cole slaw with his best knives.

“Hi, Chloe. I feel like I haven’t talked to you in weeks!” Adrianna said.

“I know. I missed you. It’s been what? Two days?” I laughed. We usually talked two or three times a day, but between holidays, murder, and Hannah, I’d been busy. I gave Adrianna a detailed account of everything that had gone on last night and this morning, and waited for her advice. With luck, she’d urge me to call in an anonymous tip to the police to pinpoint Hannah as a savage murderer.

What she said was, “Do nothing.”

“What? Please tell me you’re kidding,” I said, peeling a corner toward Brighton.

“Chloe, do not say anything to Josh about this dinner. You’ll just be acting like a jealous girlfriend. Besides, aren’t you and Josh having dinner at your parents’ house tonight? He’s going to be there with you, not with her. So, you have some time.”

“I wish she would just disappear,” I whined.

“Do you trust Josh or not?” Adrianna answered for me. “Of course you do. The only thing you have to do is start acting more dignified and block Hannah’s moves. Let her crash and burn on her own. Girls like that always do.”

“Fine. But I’m going to have to tell him about picking up his ex from the police station.”

“Yes, that’s true, but he’ll thank you for saving him the hell himself. Based on what he said about her last night, he’s no big fan of Hannah’s. He’s probably mortified that he ever went out with her.”

I agreed that if I had to see Hannah again, I would restrain myself from lobbing any more vegetables her way.

“I want to hear more about this murder. I don’t think you know this, but I do Dora Kipper’s hair, so I’ve met Oliver a bunch of times. The Kipper Compound, as I call it, is a monstrous house. Every time I’ve been there, Dora’s had some huge renovation project going on.”

“Really?” I was surprised, not by the information that Dora kept renovating her house, but by the news that Adrianna did her hair and makeup. Adrianna is a genius at making people look great. Her clients don’t just have fabulous hair and makeup; they have hair and makeup that make the most of their looks. Adrianna obviously hadn’t done the plastic surgery or Botox injections or whatever it was that had given Oliver’s widow, Dora, the ravaged appearance I’d noticed. But Adrianna had a knack for undoing the mistakes of doctors and nature, and I hoped she would talk to Dora about changing her foundation color.

“Oh, yeah. Huge house, huge attitude. Dora treats me like a servant and acts like she’s some celebrity getting done up for the red carpet. She made me get separate products just for her, so whenever I go there, I have to bring my ‘Dora duffel,’ which is a bag of hair treatments and shit that have her seal of approval. The only reason I put up with her is because she’ll pay me whatever I ask. Truly, they are disgusting people. The classic money-grubbing, shallow couple.”

“Let me guess. Two kids raised by nannies and cooped up in private schools?”

“Are you kidding?” Adrianna said. “Dora is too selfish to even consider the possibility of ruining her body or her purse pockets with children. Anything that might intrude on her lifestyle is out.”

“So far, I haven’t heard anything positive about those two. Not that Oliver deserved to be smashed over the head with a food processor. Listen, I’m going to the store myself now, but why don’t you and Owen come to dinner at my parents’ house tonight? They’d love to see you guys.”

“We’d love to. If it’s okay with Bethany and Jack. What time?”

“Sevenish. I’ll let them know you’ll be there. One thing about my parents is that they love company, and they always have twice as much food as we need.”

“Okay. Are you feeling better now?” Ade asked me.

“Yeah, I’m just irritated. But I’m going to bake a hazelnut tart for tonight, and that’ll take my mind off this Hannah disaster.”

I hung up, called my parents, and left a message on their machine to say that Adrianna and Owen would be joining us for dinner. Then I ran into Shaw’s supermarket and picked up what I needed for the tart. I had a limited repertoire of things I knew how to bake, but this hazelnut tart was always delicious, and it was perfect for the winter season. Sweet, rich, gooey, syrupy filling covered the bottom of the piecrust. The chopped hazelnuts rose to the top of the tart and took on a glistening sheen from the sugary ingredients. I’d never made the dessert for Josh but felt confident that it was a surefire way to impress even a chef.

Cooking for a chef is scary. The week before Christmas, I’d tried on three occasions to make lace cookies. I could swear that I followed all three recipes to the letter, but my globs of dough had never melted into gorgeous, bubbling, lacy disks, and each time I’d had to throw everything in the trash can. Although I know what good food tastes like, I can’t always cook it myself, so when I cooked for Josh, I usually stuck with a few dishes that I trusted myself to make. There is nothing more embarrassing than serving icky food to a chef. Take the time I concocted what I thought was going to be a wonderfully rich and flavorful pasta dish made with tagliatelle, summer squash, zucchini, grape tomatoes, Calamata olives, garlic, onions, heavy cream, a splash of chicken stock, tons of fresh herbs, and Parmesan cheese. The thing had
no
flavor. None whatsoever. In fact, it had an outright absence of flavor. Josh was completely nice about my failure and even rescued the meal by tossing in a little balsamic vinegar, but I was still humiliated. Once in a while I came up with a recipe on my own that turned out to be delicious, but it never looked as attractive as Josh’s food did. My reliable consolation when I made an ugly-looking dish was a memory of a Martha Stewart Christmas special that had been on years ago, long before she was sent to Camp Cupcake. Martha and her guest, Julia Child, stood side by side erecting towers of cream puffs to form Christmas-tree-shaped desserts. Martha’s was a two-foot-tall piece of confectionary perfection, and Julia’s was so far beyond lopsided that it threatened to fall over. But Julia Child was Julia Child, and you just knew that even if her cream puffs toppled onto the floor, they’d still taste a million times better than Martha’s. I was no Julia, but I did trust myself with a hazelnut tart.

I arrived home to find an unfamiliar car parked in my space. Just what I needed. My condo was on the third floor of a house that had been converted into individual units, each of which came with an assigned parking spot in a little paved area next to the building. Since there is practically never any on-street parking available in the neighborhood, I assumed that the strange car belonged to some desperate soul who hoped no one would notice its presence. I parked temporarily in a neighbor’s spot and headed upstairs. I was climbing the steep steps that ran up the back of my building when I ran into Noah. Ick!

Noah lived on the second floor. I’d made the mistake of having a fling with him last summer, just before I’d met Josh. Cocky, arrogant, slick, and good-looking, Noah had somehow tricked me into thinking he might be worth my time. Our short-lived relationship, if it could even be called that, had ended when I’d discovered that Noah felt the need to share himself with every twenty-something in the greater Boston area. The pig! Today, seated on the landing reading the paper, he was wearing nothing but sweatpants. It was a warm day for December in Boston, but it was not
that
warm. Any excuse to show off, and he was all over it.

“Hello, Ms. Carter.” Noah grinned saucily.

“Hello, asshole.” I kept walking. Noah showed no reaction to my usual greeting. I probably wasn’t the only woman who said hello to him that way.

“I didn’t realize you were around,” he said. “My friend is parked in your space, but she’s leaving in a minute anyhow.” He flipped the paper over and let out a contented sigh obviously meant to suggest satisfaction with his morning romp.

“Of course she is. God forbid she hang around too long, right? Tell her to move it now, or I’ll have her towed to Quincy.” I got to my back door and fumbled for my key. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I yelled down at him.

“Day off,” he called back.

So I’d had a crappy night and crappy morning. Big deal, right? I’d spend the rest of the day in domestic bliss, baking away and listening to music.

I walked into my living room to catch my cat, Gato, peeing in my yucca plant. “Get out of there, you freak!” I shouted at him. He finished his business, stared grumpily at me, and hopped off to find other mischief. Ah, domestic bliss.

I turned on the oven and dumped the hazelnuts onto a baking sheet. First, you roast them, and then you peel off the skins. I set out the rest of my ingredients and put the store-bought piecrust into the oven to brown. I couldn’t be bothered to make my own piecrust, and the ready-made was always better than my homemade, anyhow. I changed into comfortable sweats and big fuzzy socks and pretended it was a cold New England winter day. I was grateful there wasn’t a bitter ice storm raging outside, but a gentle snowfall would’ve felt more festive than this unseasonable warmth.

I mixed up the filling for the tart and tried to think about something other than that pain in the ass, Hannah, who was clearly going to keep running after Josh. He just wasn’t mean enough to tell her to buzz off and stay out of his life. In fact, he wasn’t mean at all. I, on the other hand, could tell her to go to hell, but I couldn’t exactly spend twenty-four hours a day driving her away from my boyfriend. And as long as she was caught up in Oliver’s murder, she’d take advantage of Josh’s kindness to try to lure him back into her life. Not that he’d fall for it, I assured myself. But I didn’t need the aggravation.

Stupid Hannah,
I thought. I measured out a third of a cup of corn syrup and whisked it in with the eggs. Was she officially a suspect? I hadn’t even asked if she’d been fingerprinted, and I’d been too busy launching produce into her cart to notice whether her hands were covered in ink. Anyway, she’d probably washed her hands. Had anyone else been taken to the police station along with Hannah? Gavin hadn’t spent much time in the gallery last night, but he still struck me as a good suspect. Although he had outbid the Full Moon Group for Simmer’s location, maybe he’d wanted to make sure that the group wouldn’t remain a threat; with one partner dead, the Full Moon Group’s ability to compete with him was weakened, wasn’t it? On the other hand, when Oliver was alive, Gavin had already had what he wanted: the ideal Newbury Street location for a restaurant that was about to open.

I pulled the browned piecrust and the hazelnuts out of the oven, spread the nuts between two dishcloths, and rubbed them around to peel off the skins. These were exceptionally big hazelnuts, and, as I realized when I peeked under the top dish towel, they’d already been skinned.
Dummy,
I said to myself. I threw half of them into the blender and pulsed the machine to chop them coarsely. The chopping created quite a racket, and I worried that the blender would overheat and start emitting smoke signals. I didn’t remember such a violent noise erupting the last time I’d used it, but if this blender was on the fritz, I’d have a good excuse to buy a new, fancier one! I transferred the hazelnuts to the bowl with the other ingredients, mixed everything, poured the whole mess into the pie shell, put it onto a baking sheet, and gently carried the wobbly tart to the oven. I set the timer and started to clean the kitchen. Josh always cleaned as he cooked, whereas I usually made a disaster of the kitchen and ended up having to scrub every surface. This time, I was trying to follow his lead.

Has Hannah called a lawyer?
I wondered, as I loaded my tiny dishwasher. Maybe a lawyer could solve all my problems with her. He could advise her not to discuss the case with anyone—especially ex-boyfriends. Why were the police so interested in her, anyhow? And what had she been doing at the back of the gallery last night? Why had she even been near Eliot’s office? Had she been demanding even more expensive living accommodations from Oliver? And when he refused, she’d clunked him over the head with a Robocoupe?