A Measure of Murder Page 9

  She continued to peel off her beer label but was interrupted by the arrival of our basket of sweet potato fries. Four hands simultaneously reached out to grab the crispy, golden treats. Singing makes you hungry as well as thirsty.

  Wiping her fingers on a paper napkin, Roxanne swallowed and then leaned in close to me. “And I gotta say, Jill never much liked me even before I got that part. She’s made no secret of the fact that she thinks Marta is always playing favorites with—Oh, speak of the devil.”

  The choral director breezed up to our table, planted a series of baci on all our cheeks, and then plopped down into the seat between Eric and me. “So sorry to be so late, but I got a call from my mother in Napoli, and she loves to talk. Her neighbor has been doing construction on his house, and she wanted someone to complain to about how noisy and dusty it’s been. Madò!” Marta craned her neck toward the bar, where our waitress was busy loading up a tray of drinks for another table. “I could sure use a glass of vino rosso.”

  Eric jumped up. “I’ll get it.”

  He returned quickly with the glass of wine as well as another Martini. “I got you the Chianti. Hope that’s okay. They don’t have much of a wine selection.”

  Marta shrugged and accepted the glass. “Va bene. Grazie.”

  Eric saw me eyeing his cocktail and asked, “You want another, too?”

  “No thanks.” And then, looking him in the eye, “I gotta drive.”

  He waved off this bit of mothering. “Hey, man, I’ll be fine. I know most of the cops in town, a benefit your job as civil attorney never gave you.” He graced me with a Groucho smile and then laughed at my sour look. “Relax, I’m just kidding. No way two drinks are going to make me drunk. Besides, I had a big dinner. And these will aid in soaking up any excess liquor.” Helping himself to another handful of fries, he stuffed them into his mouth all at once and then turned back to Phillip.

  Whatever. I sipped my bourbon and listened in on Roxanne and Marta’s conversation. They were discussing food, always one of my favorite subjects. Marta was talking about Neapolitan-style pizza. “I’ve searched and searched,” she was saying, “but have not found anything close to it here. The crusts, they are never right.”

  “Maybe it’s the flour,” I jumped in. “You need a kind higher in protein content than most of ones you get here in the States so that the dough can develop enough gluten. You know, ’cause even though it’s become almost a bad word these days, it’s the gluten that makes the dough strong and stretchy enough to form really big bubbles, which are what give a good pizza crust its amazingly tender and chewy texture. So if a place is using regular ol’ American flour, that could really affect the quality of their crust.”

  They both stared at me, surprised, no doubt, by this food-fact outburst. “I pretty much grew up in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant,” I explained with a shrug. “And my dad has lectured me about things like the acid content of canned tomatoes and double-zero flour since I was a babe-in-arms.”

  Marta scooted her chair closer to mine. “Tell me, what part of Italia is your famiglia from?”

  “The north. Liguria and Tuscany, mostly. They were fishermen who came to Santa Cruz in the late eighteen hundreds. As I said before, I’m fourth-generation, but the family has tried its best to keep the culture alive.”

  “Parli italiano?”

  “Solo un po’. I’ve spent enough time around my nonna that I can usually get the gist of what she’s saying, but we always spoke English at home. As a result, I never became at all fluent.”

  “Ah.”

  “I know, it’s sad,” I said with a slow shake of the head. “I always wanted to take some classes, but my high school only offered Spanish and French, and then in college, well . . .”

  “It’s never too late.” Marta took a sip of wine and then dabbed her mouth with her napkin. “So, to completely change the subject, I heard Eric say you were a lawyer?”

  “Used to be,” I said. “I quit practicing law a few years back, after my mom died and my dad needed me to take over her position at the family restaurant. I’m what you call an ‘inactive’ lawyer now.”

  “But you still know about the law, no?”

  “Some. It depends. Anything very specific, and I’d probably have to look it up. Why? Do you have a legal question?”

  “I do, actually.” Marta glanced at the others, but Eric, Roxanne, and Phillip were engaged in a lively discussion about the new Coen brothers movie and paying us no attention. “It’s about . . . diffamazione. How do you say it in English? You know, when someone says lies about you?”

  “Defamation. Is someone defaming you?”

  Marta nodded, again looking around the table. “I just heard there’s an ugly rumor going around that I was not the composer of the piece performed last month at the Chicago Festival of Contemporary Music. That it was written by someone else and I am falsely claiming it as mine. I gather whoever started it is continuing to say this thing, so I was wondering if I there was anything I could do to stop them from spreading such lies.”

  “Whoa. You have any idea who might have started such a rumor?”

  “I do,” she said, staring at the bartender as he shook a metal cocktail shaker and then strained a frothy pink concoction into two Martini glasses. Jaw set, she turned to face me. “I’d rather not say who right now, but I do suspect one of the members of the chorus.”

  Chapter Nine

  “You’ll want to let that reduce down to just a tablespoon or so. Au sec, it’s called.” Javier peered over my shoulder at the mixture of white wine vinegar, cracked peppercorns, fresh tarragon, and chopped shallots simmering in the saucepan. It was late Friday afternoon, and as promised, he was showing me some of the hot line basics.

  Unwrapping three blocks of butter, he cut one in half and dropped it and the two whole pieces into another pot and set it on the stove. “The ratio for a hollandaise—or in this case, its derivative sauce, béarnaise—is two pounds of butter, which is what this will end up being after it’s been clarified, to a dozen egg yolks. That’ll yield about a quart of sauce, which is generally enough for one dinner service here.”

  “No wonder it tastes so amazing. It’s pretty much pure fat.” I eyeballed the liquid remaining in my saucepan and held the pot up for Javier’s inspection. “Looks about right to me.”

  “Uh-huh. Strain it into that bowl there and then add an ounce of water. Once it’s cooled a little, we’ll whip in the egg yolks.”

  “So what are you going to use it for?” I located the small mesh strainer and poured the reduction through it into the stainless steel bowl Javier had set on the counter. “Béarnaise sauce usually goes with steak, right?”

  “True, but I’m actually going to serve it with seared salmon tonight. Along with a lemon and white wine risotto.”

  “Yum. I hope there are leftovers for me to try.” I placed my hand on the bowl. “Seems cool enough now.”

  Javier nodded and, grabbing an egg in each hand from the flat sitting on the counter, began cracking shells and draining the whites into a plastic container and then letting the yolks slide into the bowl of reduced tarragon vinegar. He looked up as the door from the dining room opened.

  Brian, the new cook, crossed the kitchen and examined the contents of the bowl. “Béarnaise sauce, huh? I had the joy of making the hollandaise every week for Sunday brunch at Le Radis Ravi.” He deposited his bulging black leather messenger bag in the corner of the room. “So how you gonna use the whites? We used to make meringue-based cookies all the time.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. We got some amazing olallieberries in today’s Bolinas Farms delivery, so I figure we could do individual-serving pavlovas for tomorrow night with them and the whites.” Javier tossed the last two shells into the compost bucket at his feet and then tore a sheet of plastic wrap from the mammoth roll hanging above the counter and pulled it tight over the plastic container of egg whites. “Since you’re such an expert, you want to get Sally sta
rted with the béarnaise while I take these over to Amy? I might be a few minutes, ’cause I want to talk to her about tonight’s desserts.”

  “Just as long as you’re not really going out to sneak a cigarette,” I said with a grin.

  “Very funny,” Javier said. “I’ll have you know it’s been eight full days now since I’ve had one. But híjole! I had no idea it would be this hard.” He started out the door but then turned back. “And if you finish the sauce before I’m back, go ahead and start doing the mise en place for the line. Oh, and how’s that clarified butter doing, Sal?”

  “Oh, shit!” I hurried back to the stove and, seeing that the pot was on the verge of boiling over, grabbed the towel hanging from my apron and yanked it off the fire.

  “Be sure to save the milk solids,” Javier added as he headed for the garde manger. “I’ll use them in the risotto.”

  Brian got a bain marie—the bottom half of a double boiler—going on the Wolf range and then retrieved his messenger bag. “Back in a jiff,” he said.

  I had skimmed the foam from the top of the melted butter and was straining the rest through some cheesecloth and a chinois when he banged back through the door from the garde manger whistling the fugue from the Requiem’s Kyrie. He’d changed into black chef’s pants and a white jacket and was tying an apron about his waist.

  “Your water’s boiling,” I said, setting the clarified butter next to the stove to keep it warm.

  “Right.” Brian handed me the bowl of vinegar mixture and egg yolks. “You’re gonna whip these babies over the bain marie till they’re good and frothy.” I grabbed a wire whisk, and he provided a running commentary as I beat the eggs: “Don’t let the bowl touch the water. That’s good. You want the yolks to thicken and turn a light lemon-yellow color. It should form ribbons. Yeah, that’s it. Pull it off the heat!”

  I jerked the bowl away from the steaming water and set it on the counter.

  “Give it a few more whisks to let the pan cool down a bit,” Brian said as he reached for the clarified butter. “Right. Now this is the tricky part. Though it’s way harder when you only make a small batch, ’cause the eggs will want to cook, and then you’ll end up with a broken sauce. I’ll hold the pan over the steam again, and you slowly whisk in the butter. Too fast! You want a thin stream. That’s right. Good. Don’t stop—keep whisking!”

  My arm was aching, but I couldn’t help but marvel, as I often did, at the wondrous chemistry of cooking. At first, the melted butter remained separate, creating dark swirls in the pale-yellow yolks. But as I added more and more, there came a point when—presto chango—the sauce “caught,” and the two ingredients coalesced to become a single luscious concoction.

  “Okay. You can add the butter faster now,” Brian said, and I realized we’d both been holding our breath, waiting for this magic moment to occur.

  Once all the butter had been incorporated into the sauce, he had me season it with salt and then set it next to the back burner to keep warm. I leaned against the counter, shaking the cramp out of my forearm. One thing was certain: as long as I didn’t strain any muscles in the process, working the hot line was going to vastly improve my upper-body strength.

  Brian consulted a sheet he had in his pocket and then headed for the walk-in. Grabbing the service cart, I followed him into the chilly room. “So,” I asked, “you thinking of auditioning for any of the bass solos in the Requiem?”

  “No thanks.” Brian started handing me small hotel pans covered with plastic wrap, which I set on the cart. “I’ll leave that to better—and braver—singers. Besides, I’m way too busy right now to learn the parts.”

  “Braver is right,” I said with a laugh. “From what I hear, a solo can end up getting you sick. Did you hear about that soprano, Roxanne, who got food poisoning or something the night before she was supposed to sing the solo at the last concert? It turns out auditioning could be a dangerous business.”

  When Brian didn’t answer, I looked up from sorting the hot line ingredients, expecting some kind of amused expression. But he wasn’t smiling.

  “Roxanne’s my girlfriend,” he said.

  “Oh.” When would I ever learn to keep my big mouth shut? “Sorry. I didn’t realize . . .”

  “That’s okay.” Brian set one last hotel pan on the cart and started wheeling it back out to the kitchen. “It’s just that she took the whole thing kind of hard. Especially since she suspects it wasn’t an accident.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Brian parked the utility cart and began dropping pans of ingredients for tonight’s dinner into the inserts flanking the Wolf stove. “Well, I have to say, it did seem awful convenient, how Jill ended up getting the solo that way.”

  “What? You think she might have caused Roxanne’s illness?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I know it sounds pretty farfetched. But that’s what Roxanne thinks.”

  * * *

  The next morning, I was awakened by a shaft of sunlight streaming straight into my eyes and was momentarily confused. Had I overslept? I’d had a late night on the line at Gauguin, made even later by the beers we’d consumed after the shift had finished. Shoving Buster’s snoring head off my chest, I sat up to peer at the bedside clock: Ah, only seven forty-five. Relieved, I fell back onto the pillow. Over two hours till rehearsal.

  But the sun had fooled me. We were having one of those rare summer mornings without fog. And given how warm my bedroom already felt, it looked like it was gonna be a scorcher—by Santa Cruz standards, anyway, which meant it might even hit eighty degrees.

  As soon as I threw back the covers, the dog stood up and stretched and gave his lanky, dusty-brown body a vigorous shake. Then, jumping off the bed, he stood still, eyeing me expectantly. “Hold your horses,” I said. “I gotta get dressed first.” Pulling on a pair of khaki shorts and a KPIG radio T-shirt (“Praise the Lard!”), I headed for the kitchen, Buster nose-bumping my right calf all the way down the hall.

  Once I’d let him out the back door, I set about brewing a pot of coffee. After that late night helping out on the hot line at Gauguin, a major kick-start was in order.

  For this was the day of the dreaded octets.

  The rehearsal room was already abuzz when I wheeled my bike inside, and the volume continued to amplify as singers streamed through the door, dragged folding chairs into position, and sat gabbing with their fellow section members.

  At ten o’clock sharp, Nadia sat down at the piano, and we commenced our warm-ups. But after a several less-than-enthusiastic arpeggios on the part of the chorus, Marta stopped us. “Right. I can tell some of you have not quite woken up yet. So let’s try something different to get the motors working. I want you to sing ‘twenty-two toads took the train to Torino’ on each pitch as you ascend and then descend the scale.”

  We did as she directed and, notwithstanding all the giggling that accompanied the exercise, indeed sounded far more alive than before. If nothing else, just having to concentrate on getting the words right required a certain level of alertness.

  “Bene,” she said. “Now again, on ‘which wrist watch is a Swiss wrist watch.’” But this tongue twister proved nearly impossible, and by the time we reached the octave, most of the chorus had disintegrated into silliness and laughter.

  “Okay, okay.” Marta smiled and motioned for us to be seated. “Enough of that.” Climbing onto the podium, she opened her Mozart score. “Let’s begin with the octets, shall we?”

  The boisterous mood vanished. All around me, singers started clearing their throats and flipping through their music. “Sophie and Rosemary,” Marta said, turning to the soprano section, and then she indicated another pair each of altos, tenors, and basses. “Come stand up front.” Allison had the bad luck to be one of the altos picked in this first go-round but cheerfully took her place to the left of the podium with the other alto and the sopranos while the men shuffled over to the other side.

  “We’ll start right at the allegro, with the bass
es’ entrance on ‘Kyrie eleison.’ Can you give them the preceding chord on the fermata, Nadia?”

  The alto part started on the second measure, and I followed in my score, quietly humming the fugue motif along with the two altos in the octet. One of the tenors got briefly lost but made a quick recovery, and we all clapped when they made it to the end of the movement.

  “Bravi. Ben fatto.” Marta tapped a pencil against her stand by way of applause and, as the first group returned to their seats, turned to select another eight victims. When she pointed at me, I took a deep breath and then went to join the other alto, Claire. Allison had done fine, I told myself. And so would I. No big deal.

  My partner and I nailed the altos’ first short section of the fugue, and I had to suppress a smile of relief. But then the sopranos blew their entrance on the next page, and Marta cut us off. “Let’s try it again, from the pickup to letter G,” she said, and Nadia gave all four parts their starting notes. I was so discombobulated at being stopped midstream, however, that I missed hearing my pitch and came in on the wrong one. My fellow alto—led astray by my errant note—unfortunately followed suit, and so the two of us ended up flailing about for several bars, trying vainly to get back on track. With a glare in our direction, Marta stopped the octet once more. “From the same spot,” she said, making no attempt to hide her annoyance.

  Nadia pitched us all again, but now I was utterly frazzled, and the four notes went by so quickly that to my horror, I realized I still didn’t have my starting note. I waited to see if Claire would sing it, but she had clearly been depending on me. So once again, we completely flubbed our entrance.

  Marta cut us off for a third time and directed an icy stare at Claire and me. “If you two cannot be bothered to practice your part, then let’s get some people up here who have taken the trouble to learn it. Deborah and Dinah, would you come up please and take their places?”