Culinary Mystery Series, #9
Bantam
April 2001
Featuring: Goldy Schulz
336 pages
ISBN: 0553578308
Paperback (reprint)
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When Goldy Schulz is offered a temporary stint hosting a
cooking show for PBS, she jumps at the chance. After all,
she could use the money-not to mention the great exposure.
Her catering business is in shambles, and publicizing her
new venture as a personal chef will help get her back on
track. Plus taping the shows at Colorado's posh Killdeer
Shi Resort will be fun. A little cooking, a little
chitchat. What could go wrong?
The question Goldy should have asked is, what wouldn't go
wrong-especially when she has to drive through a blizzard
to do one of her shows live for PBS telethon. To make
matters worse, Goldy has an unpleasant duty to perform
right after the show. She and her policeman husband, Tom,
have agreed to sell a piece of Tom's treasured war
memorabilia to help ease their financial woes. The buyer:
Doug Portman, art critic, law enforcement wannabe-and, to
her eternal embarrassment, Goldy's ex-boyfriend.
Predictably, the live broadcast is riddled with culinary
catastrophes-from the Chesapeake Crabcakes right down to
the Ice-Capped Gingersnaps. But the deadliest dish of all
comes after the camera go off, when an unexplainable.
Skiing accident claims Doug Portman's life-and Goldy is
the one who finds his crumpled body on the slopes. Even
more shocking is what police find tucked away in Doug's
BMW: a greeting card with a potentially deadlychemical
inside.
As the police try to determine if Doug's accident was
really foul play, Goldy does a little investigation of her
own-but finds more questions than answers. Was Doug,
chairman of the state Parole Board, accepting bribes from
potential parolees? Was he connected to the ex-con who's
been telling Killdeer skiers that he's planning to poison
a cop? And how did Goldy and Tom get mixed up in this mess?
When a series of suspicious mishaps places Goldy's own
life in jeopardy, she knows she must whip up her own crime-
solving recipe, and fast-befroe a hearty dose of intrigue
and a deadly dash of danger ends her cooking career once
and for allβ
Excerpt Show business and death don't mix. Unfortunately, I
discovered this while hosting a TV cooking show.
Up to then, I'd enjoyed being a TV chef. The job didn't
pay well, but this was PBS. Arthur Wakefield, the floor
director, had crisply informed me that most chefs made
nothing for guest visits, much less five thousand clams
for six shows. He could have added: And what's more, those
chefs' kitchens haven't been closed by the county health
inspector! But Arthur said nothing along those lines. Like
most folks, he was unaware that my in-home commercial
catering kitchen had been red-tagged, that is, closed
until further notice.
So: Bad pay notwithstanding, I was lucky to have the TV
job. Actually, I was lucky to have any food work at all.
And I certainly didn't want more than our family and a few
friends to know why.
I could not tell my upscale clientsβthose who'd made
Goldilocks' Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! the
premier food-service business of Aspen Meadow, Coloradoβ
that our plumbing wasn't up to code. And of course, I
could never let it be known that my dear husband Tom was
ransacking the house for valuables to sell off, so we
could buy fancy drains and thereby get my business
reopened. No plumbing? No drains? It sounded nasty.
Sordid, even.
In September, things had gone badly. The county health
inspector, giggling from the shock engendered by his
surprise visit, closed me down. The bustle in our kitchen
immediately subsided. Calls for catering gigs stopped.
Suppliers sent letters asking if I wanted to keep my
accounts current. Yes, yes, I always replied cheerfully,
I'm looking forward to reopening soon! Soon. Ha!
Without my business,an enterprise I'd lovingly built up
for almost a decade, I entered a spiritual fog as thick as
the gray autumnal mist snaking between the Colorado
mountains. I gave up yoga. Drank herb tea while reading
back issues of Gourmet. Spent days gazing out the new
windows in our beautifully-remodeled-but-noncompliant
kitchen. And repeatedly told Tom how gorgeous the kitchen
looked, even if I couldn't work in it....
Truly, the place did look great. So what if it didn't meet
new county regulations mandating that every commercial
kitchen sink have backflow protection? Months earlier, Tom
had rescued the remodeling job after a dishonest
contractor had made our lives hell. During time away from
his work as a Homicide Investigator for the Furman County
Sheriff's Department, he'd put in marble counters, cherry
cabinets, expensive windows, a solid oak floor. And the
wrong drains.
To fix the problem, Tom was now tearing out the guts of
three new sinks and prying up the floor beneath. He
insisted we should heal our temporary cash-flow problem by
selling a pair of historic skis he'd bought years before
in an odd lot of military memorabilia. In October, I'd
started calling antiques dealers while wondering how,
during a prolonged closure, I could keep my hand in the
food business.
There'd been no takers for the skis. How else to get
money? I'd wracked my brain for other ways to work as a
cook: Volunteer at a school cafeteria? Roll a burrito
stand up and down Aspen Meadow's Main Street?
Eventually, it had been my old friend Eileen Druckman
who'd come through with a job. Loaded with money and
divorced less than two years, Eileen had just bought the
Summit Bistro at Colorado's posh Killdeer Ski Resort.
Eileenβfortyish, pretty, and blond, with cornflower blue
eyes and a full, trembling mouth that had just begun to
smile againβhad hired a good-looking young chef named Jack
Gilkey, whose food was legend in Killdeer. To Eileen's
delight, she and Jack had quickly become an item
personally as well as professionally. When I told Eileen
my business woes, she and Jack had kindly offered me the
position of co-chef at the bistro. But I couldn't work
restaurant hoursβseven in the morning to midnightβfifty
miles from home. Restaurant workers, I'd noticed, had a
high mortality rate, no home life, or both.
Eileen, ever generous, had promptly pitched a cooking-show
idea to the Front Range Public Broadcasting System. They'd
said yes. I'd demurred. Eileen argued that my cooking on
TV, at her bistro, would boost her business plus give her
a huge tax write-off. Meanwhile, I could use my television
exposure to publicize the new culinary venture I'd finally
hit upon: becoming a personal chef. That particular avenue
of food work requires no commercial kitchen; it only
requires a wealthy client's kitchen. Just the ticket.
So I'd said yes to show business. The Killdeer Corporation
had offered free season ski-lift passes to me as well as
to my fourteen-year-old son, Arch. Shot through with new
enthusiasm and hope, I couldn't wait to cook and ski. I
gave up herb tea for shots of espresso laced with whipping
cream. In November, I plunged eagerly back into work.
Every Friday morning, I would appear at Killdeer's Summit
Bistro to do my bit before the camera. At first I was
nervous. And we did have a few mishaps. Thankfully,
Cooking at the Top! was taped. Viewers never saw me slash
my handβactually, sever a minor arteryβwhile boning a
turkey during the first episode. The spray of blood onto
the prep counter had been distinctly unappetizing. The
following week, I produced a meringue so sweaty it needed
antiperspirant. I also dropped two roastsβone of them
stuffedβand splattered myself with a pitcher of Bearnaise.
But with glitches edited out, even I had to admit the
Saturday morning broadcasts looked pretty good.
On the upside, I told jokes on-screen and mixed cream into
smashed garlicky potatoes. I chatted about the
rejuvenating properties of toasted, crunchy almonds while
folding melted butter into almond cake batter. I gushed
about the trials and joys of learning to ski as I chopped
mountains of Godiva Bittersweet Chocolate. I swore to my
viewers that my recipe made the darkest, most sinfully
fudgy cookies on the slopes. I even assiduously followed
Arthur's tasting instructions: Take a bite. Moan. Move
your hips and roll your eyes. Say M-m-mm, Aaah, Oooh! Yes!
Yes! Watching the footage, Tom had quipped that the
program should be called The Food-Sex Show.
All in all, the first four weeks of taping went well. By
Week Four, though, my personal-chef business still had not
taken off. I only had one upcoming job. Arthur Wakefield
himself had offered me a gig the following week: preparing
food for a holiday in-home wine-tasting. Arthur
supplemented his floor director income by working as a
wine importer. He needed to showcase some new winesβand
serve a gourmet mealβto high-end customers and retailers.
So, even in the personal-chef department, things were
looking up.
Unfortunately, in Week Five, Cooking at the Top! hit a
snag, one occasioned by a predictable Colorado crisis:
blizzard.
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