Turn up the Heat (Gourmet Girl Series #3)
217
Turn up the Heat (Gourmet Girl Series #3)
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Overview
Having an executive chef boyfriend guarantees Chloe Carter the best table at Simmer, Boston’s hottest new restaurant, any night of the week. But the Back Bay foodie’s incredible comped dinners are usually enjoyed without Josh, whose pressure-cooker job has taken over his life. The same can’t be said of Leandra, the pretty blond Simmer server whose body was just found in a seafood delivery truck.
The truck belongs to Owen, the fiancé of Chloe’s best friend, Adrianna. And Owen has no alibi for the night Leandra was strangled with her apron strings and dumped in his truck. But Chloe is sure he didn’t do it. There are plenty of other people with motive to off the unpleasant waitress, starting with Leandra’s lover—and Simmer’s owner—Gavin Seymour. And now some expensive cooking equipment is missing, including a mandolin slicer, an eight-inch chinois, and Josh’s favorite knife. If Chloe isn’t careful while trying to clear Owen’s name, the amateur sleuth could be next to sleep with the fishes!
This ebook features mouth-watering recipes sure to satisfy more than just your appetite for crime.
Turn Up the Heat is the 3rd book in the Gourmet Girl Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504026406 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Open Road Media |
| Publication date: | 12/08/2015 |
| Series: | Gourmet Girl Mystery Series , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 217 |
| Sales rank: | 594,118 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Jessica Conant-Park is the author of Clear, Left Drowning, and the New York Times bestseller Flat-Out Love, as well as the coauthor of the Gourmet Girl mysteries. She lives in New Hampshire, where she spends an obscene amount time thinking about rocker boys and their guitars, complex caffeinated beverages, and tropical vacations. On the rare occasions that she is able to focus on other things, she writes.
Read an Excerpt
Turn Up the Heat
A Gourmet Girl Mystery
By Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant
OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2008 Susan Conant and Jessica Conant-ParkAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2640-6
CHAPTER 1
Early May in Boston. There's nothing else like it. After almost six straight weeks of apocalyptic rain, the sky had suddenly turned an all-but-forgotten blue, the temperature had risen to the miraculously high sixties, and, best of all, the outdoor dining area at my boyfriend's restaurant was finally open. Josh Driscoll, love of my life, was the executive chef at the five-month-old Newbury Street restaurant, Simmer, and tonight, for the first time ever, Simmer's fortunate patrons would be able to savor the fruits of Josh's culinary genius while dining on the sidewalk patio. When Josh had called me earlier today, he'd practically been singing into the phone. "Chloe Carter, my lovely lady, you better get your ass down here to the patio tonight! It's going to be nice!" Josh's spring fever was highly contagious: I was as excited as he was.
As Josh's girlfriend, I obviously had a major in at Simmer. Even so, my friends and I had had to wait forty-five minutes for an outdoor table that could accommodate all five of us, the five of us being me; my best friend, Adrianna; her fiancé, Owen; my social work school buddy and teaching assistant, Doug; and his new boyfriend, Terry.
Newbury Street restaurants were jammed tonight. The good weather seemed to have awakened everyone from hibernation, and all the outdoor eateries in this high-end area were packed with diners. Simmer was no exception. As we waited inside for a patio table, I looked around and, as I'd done before, felt amazed at how beautifully the place had turned out. I'd been around while Gavin Seymour, the owner, had been renovating the location, and I'd seen Simmer at its worst, with electrical wires dangling from the ceiling, holes in the walls, and floors made of crumbling concrete. Now, beautiful dark brown tiles covered the floor, modern light fixtures hung from the high ceilings, and wood moldings framed the textured walls. Gavin had wanted to create what he'd called a "worldly" feel to the restaurant; he'd been eager to have the decor and the ambiance announce that Simmer's menu wasn't limited to one style of cooking but was inspired by cuisines from around the globe. The room was filled with square tables and high-backed chairs. Because Josh had helped Gavin to pick out the china, the glassware, and the silver, I knew that all of it had been as expensive as it looked. Votive candles placed at each table gave the room a mellow glow and flattered everyone's complexion. I loathe eating at restaurants where the lighting casts a yellow tone or a weird shadow on my face; no matter how good the food is, it's hard to enjoy myself if I'm worried about resembling a ghoul.
And God forbid one not look sensational on Newbury Street, right? The problem with coming here to see Josh all the time was that I felt obliged to dress up. I mean, everyone in this sophisticated section of Boston was either independently loaded or living off someone else's money and, in either case, was a regular customer at Barney's. There was hardly an uncoiffed head of hair, a manicured hand not weighed down with Cartier jewelry, or a wallet not busting with platinum credit cards. I was torn between feeling totally nauseated by the disgusting display of wealth and pathetically eager to look as if I belonged. My deceased uncle Alan's monthly stipend kept me easily afloat, but I didn't have the money to go flinging bills around at Agnes B. and BCBG. I'd long ago run out of appropriate outfits to wear to Simmer and did my best to make my T.J. Maxx pants look like Chanel. Granted, there was a Gap on Newbury Street, but there were hardly streams of diners here in oversized hooded sweatshirts. It always took me at least an hour to get out of my apartment when I was going to Simmer. It never occurred to me to leave without pressing my wavy red hair between the burning blades of my flatiron; people on Newbury Street did not have frizz! And then I had to spend twenty minutes pretending that my L'Oreal makeup actually was from Paris, all the while slathering my blue eyes with brown liner and trying to color my pale cheeks a fresh-from-Barbados bronze. By the time I'd finished, I always felt passable on Newbury Street, but I remained basically disconnected from the obscene wealth that hit you at every snobby shop and from the stick-thin bodies that you passed on every corner. Not that there was anything horribly wrong with my body. But the average twenty-five-year-old around here weighed a hundred and ten pounds, and I was fifteen over that.
We'd just sat down at one of the ten tables that had been squeezed into a gated area on the sidewalk in front of Simmer when Josh appeared at our table. "Chloe, I just heard you guys were here. I'm sorry you had to wait so long." Josh leaned down and kissed me before brushing his arm across his sweaty forehead. He was dressed in his once-white chef's coat, now covered in permanent food stains from previous months plus fresh stains from today. His dirty-blond hair was damp at the hairline, and his eyes were heavy with exhaustion, but even the dark circles and puffy bags couldn't take away the sparkle of excitement. Business had been steady, and if tonight was any indication of how the spring and summer were going to go, Simmer was about to really take off.
Josh tossed a filthy dish towel over his shoulder and reached out to shake hands with Owen, Doug, and Terry, and then circled around the table to give Adrianna a kiss on the cheek. "How's it going, Mama?" he asked affectionately. Adrianna was almost five months pregnant but already looked about to go into labor before tonight's dessert.
She rolled her eyes. "Going great if you don't mind constant heartburn, fatigue, swollen hands, and having your ribs kicked from three to five in the morning."
"Owen kneeing you in his sleep again?" Josh grinned, and then rubbed her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I know you're having a hard time."
"Yeah, it's okay. I'm just grouchy. And starving." She looked up at him hopefully.
"That I can help with." Josh nodded assuredly. "I gotta run. I think Leandra is your waitress. Order whatever you want, and I'll comp it for you." One of the perks of being the executive chef at Simmer was that the owner, Gavin, let Josh sign off on orders so we didn't have to pay for anything except a tip. "I'll try to come out again later if I can." Josh made his way between tables to the front entrance. One couple seated near the door stopped him. Josh smiled as he accepted what I knew were compliments about his food.
Leandra appeared moments later. I'd met her a number of times before, because Josh's overwhelming work schedule meant that I was spending lots of time hanging around Simmer trying to catch glimpses of my boyfriend. In fact, I was beginning to look and feel like a barfly. Leandra was petite with very short white-blonde hair that somehow upped her femininity. (If I chopped off all my hair I'd look brutish!) She needed no makeup on her annoyingly symmetrical face, and Simmer's unisex staff T-shirt and pants left no doubt that Leandra was voluptuously female. I saw Adrianna, her usual supermodel body now rounded, scowl and toss her long blonde hair back over her shoulder. I involuntarily ran my hand down my own hair, checking for any dreaded frizz.
Leandra handed out menus. "Sorry. Hope you haven't been here too long. I can't believe how busy we are tonight, and they didn't schedule enough servers. Can I get you some drinks to start?"
"I'll take a Kirin," Doug said. "You want one, too?" he asked Terry.
Terry nodded and put his hand on Doug's knee. I still had a hard time grasping that Doug and Terry were a couple. Their homosexual relationship didn't bother me in the least; what alarmed me was Terry's style. He looked like a woman-obsessed rock star or maybe the host of a VH1 show on hair bands of the eighties. Every time he opened his mouth, part of me expected him to burst out singing, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy," "Unskinny Bop," or "Eighteen and Life." With thick, wavy, highlighted brown hair and rocker clothes, Terry was a total contrast to my social work school mentor, Doug. Doug was anything but conservative — on occasion, he wore neon — but it took most people, my parents excluded, about four seconds to figure out that he was gay.
Social work school was one thing, but I wasn't sure how Terry's image went over with his presumably more uptight professors and fellow students at MIT, where he was getting a PhD in physics. Studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology clearly put Terry in the category of über-intellectual. More importantly, he seemed genuinely to adore Doug.
Avoiding alcohol out of sympathy for Adrianna, Owen ordered lemonades for the two of them. I, on the other hand, felt the need to celebrate the arrival of spring with a crisp glass of Pinot Grigio.
Leandra reappeared a few minutes later with our drinks. As she set our glasses down, I wondered how she was going to get through the brutally hot and humid Boston summer in Simmer's required attire. Her heavy cotton short-sleeved black shirt looked like it didn't allow for much airflow, and the long black dress pants were stylishly tight with a slightly flared boot cut at the bottom. As if to assure a minimum of heat loss, all the servers and bartenders wore long black aprons with Simmer written across the top in white lettering.
"Okay, we need to toast," I said, raising my glass. "To the appearance of the sun, the end of school, and dinner with good friends," I proposed cheerily.
"Not so fast." Doug stopped me before I could take a sip of wine. "You still have finals to get through."
I sighed. "I haven't forgotten." Actually, I had forgotten about exams, at least momentarily, until Doug mentioned them. He took great pleasure in humorously reminding me that as a doctoral student, he was superior to me. Finals were going to be a nightmare. I had two long papers to finish writing and three two-hour in-class exams. It was at times like this that I regretted enrolling in social work school. Although I was finding more and more things to like about the experience, I still hid my ambivalence about school from my peers. Most of the other students were avidly devoted to their studies and their field placements (social work speak for internships), and I had enrolled only because of a clause in my uncle Alan's will that required me to accept an all-expenses-paid trip to the land of graduate school. In my late uncle's opinion, I needed a master's degree in something. Anything. Only then would I receive my inheritance. I'd been pretty resentful of this manipulative and controlling plan that came from the other side. When I'd originally chosen social work school, the choice had felt as if I'd drawn it out of a hat, but as the end of my first year approached, I was beginning to think that my choice hadn't been so random after all. The fit between me and the profession was better than I'd expected, and I was finding that social work skills actually applied to daily life. For instance, instead of just seeing Terry as a complete oddball, I was interested in the personality characteristics that pushed him to deviate from the norm. How did he manage to remain independent and unique? Why didn't he cave in to societal standards?
"Well, we're going to toast anyway, finals approaching or not." I raised my glass and clinked drinks with everyone.
I smiled across the table at Adrianna, who, despite feeling ghastly during her pregnancy, was as beautiful as ever. Maybe because she was feeling so terrible, she was making an extra effort to look as stunning as possible. Her hair and makeup were done to perfection, and she was wearing an adorable navy blue wraparound maternity top that hugged her round belly and her full chest. When my sister, Heather, had been pregnant with each of her children, she'd always worn voluminous tops that covered her body and hid her weight gain. Ade was doing the opposite: embracing her body's changes and accentuating her growing curves. But as much as she was displaying the pregnancy with her usual confidence, she was pretty tight-lipped about the entire concept of motherhood and had yet to express any feelings about being on the verge of becoming a parent. Children had never topped her favorites list; I'm not sure that she'd ever intended to become a parent, and I suspected she was more afraid than she was letting on. At least her fiancé, Owen, was enthusiastic, in fact, sometimes irritatingly so. But unlike Adrianna, he was practical. He had already started shopping for clothes, diapers, and baby equipment. Remarkably, Owen still had the sense to give Ade the emotional space she needed. As to physical space, I had no clue about how they expected to fit all that baby gear into their new apartment.
I did, however, feel sure that Adrianna and Owen would have a beautiful baby. In terms of looks, Owen was as attractive as Adrianna. His black hair, fair skin, and bright blue eyes, coupled with his charming personality, made him a dream. The hitch was his garish taste in clothing. The T-shirt he wore tonight had an arrow pointing to the left and the words, That's My Kid in There! To make sure that the ridiculous T-shirt would deliver its message with full impact, Owen had been careful to keep Adrianna on the correct side.
Although Adrianna and Owen had not planned on having a baby, the two of them were managing this enormous surprise fairly well. They were moving in together next week and had found a decent two-bedroom apartment around the corner from me in Brighton. To describe their new apartment as having two bedrooms was pushing it, since the second bedroom was actually a walk-in closet, but the tiny room did have a radiator and a small window, so it would work as a nursery, at least for a while. What's more, although Adrianna and Owen hadn't set a wedding date — they couldn't even decide whether to get married before or after the baby was born — they were nonetheless officially engaged. I was just happy that they were together at all, especially since Adrianna had freaked out when she'd found out she was pregnant and had foolishly made out with Josh's sous chef, Snacker, a number of times in some sort of rebellious denial. On the night the unsuspecting Owen was going to propose, in fact, just as he was about to propose, right here at Simmer, Adrianna had suddenly announced both her pregnancy and her recent history with Snacker. Owen had understandably flipped out, but fortunately, the two of them had quickly worked things out. Owen and Snacker, on the other hand, loathed each other but remained coldly polite, mostly for my sake.
"So what are we ordering?" asked the ever-hungry Adrianna. Despite complaining about heartburn all the time, the girl couldn't get enough to eat. "The cod with vegetables looks really good. This is a new menu, right?"
"Right. They've only been running it for a few days. It's got all the new spring items on it. Josh had to teach the kitchen staff all the recipes and how to plate the food. I think it looks awesome." I was bursting with pride at Josh's food.
I'd watched him sit at my kitchen table, pen in hand, while he brainstormed to come up with the perfect dishes for the menu. I'd also learned how he went about pricing them out. It was fairly appalling to learn how little it costs to make some plates and what restaurants charge for them. The basic rule was that you figured out what the protein portion of the dish would cost, like the steak or the tuna, then you'd estimate the cost of the other ingredients, add those together, multiply by three, and then add three dollars. So, a twenty-four-dollar entrée might only cost the restaurant seven dollars in actual food costs. Josh had explained to me that after following the basic rule, he would then adjust the price depending on how a dish sold. Pasta dishes were great because they sold really well, and the pasta was cheap to buy, so chefs could up the price on those menu items. It was also easy to up the prices for lobster and tuna dishes, which were obvious luxury foods and sold a ton. Chicken, on the other hand, often had to be on a menu to please the occasional customer who wanted it, but it generally didn't sell well, so a chicken entrée price would stay close to the formulated pricing cost.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Turn Up the Heat by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant. Copyright © 2008 Susan Conant and Jessica Conant-Park. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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