Deadly Delights

by Judith Carlough

Chapter One  Monday evening, day one of the Savannah Savors Cook-off

It was the night everything went to hell in a blender. 

I lingered on the balcony of the Whitney’s gracious home, watching a puny breeze stir the Spanish moss tendrils on the massive live oaks, in perfect rhythm to the smooth Motown music inside. It was the first night of the Savannah Savors Cook Off—biggest culinary competition in the South—and the Whitneys always hosted an intimate launch party for about three hundred guests. If you didn’t get invited, you practically had to leave town on an emergency to save face. The band started to amp things up, and I heard the choppy piano opening to Crocodile Rock. Pain sliced through me. 

“Miz Delacroix,” a sheepish voice erased my bittersweet memory. “I wonder if . . . ”

I didn’t recognize the speaker, but I was a good enough private investigator to detect her question. “You want to know if Jetman is coming,” I said.

She nodded like a bobblehead doll. 

“Impossible to know. Better stick around.” Jetman—America’s most notorious radio shock jock and tonight’s guest of honor—was already two hours late. The woman sighed and disappeared into the Whitney’s great room, built originally as a ballroom for debutantes in hoopskirts.

I fluffed the hem of my swing dress to ventilate my undercarriage, which had been glistening for hours (ladies never say sweating). Truth is, I glisten like a plough horse and the lethal humidity made me sticky as cotton candy. That’s what gaining fifty-five pounds will do to you, I chided myself. 

Inside the great room, men in madras blazers and bow ties chatted up women wearing flowing and jewelry extracted from safe-deposit boxes. The servers from Delicious Delights Catering Company navigated the crowded sea of guests like graceful sailboats, D2C2 embroidered in silver on polar-white jackets. A few employees weren’t following proper protocols: a pretty Asian girl’s jacket was unbuttoned at the neck, and a short, muscular man with a ponytail left his non-serving hand dangling, instead of holding it at an angle behind his back. These missteps would have made D2C2’s owner, Suzette Sinclair, apoplectic. I figured they must be new hires, part of her big expansion plans. As a minority owner of D2C2, I paid attention to details.

I passed the antique buffet table and noticed several platters were running low, so I headed to the kitchen. At the swinging doors, I took deep, steadying, breaths. You’re just visiting, nothing bad will happen, I told myself and pushed through into pandemonium. What looks like chaos to amateurs is really elegant kitchen choreography, where one wrong step will land you flat on your patootie. At a center worktable, Suzette embellished desserts with a pastry bag while a videographer on a short stepladder recorded the scene for a video to train new hires. 

I walked gingerly through the melee, controlling my kitchen anxiety. When the videographer stopped shooting, I said, “We’re three kinds of high tonight.”

Suzette arched an eyebrow but kept on task, decorating mini-éclairs with zebra stripes of dark and white chocolate. “I don’t have time for foolishness,” she said.

“High society, high celebrity, high calorie,” I chuckled. 

“Humph.” A one-syllable response was almost chatty for the woman who has been my best friend since we met in the third grade cafeteria of St. Celia’s Elementary in New Orleans. Suzette had traded her po’ boy for my peanut butter, bacon, and mayonnaise sandwich, which she ate with the single-mindedness of Einstein deconstructing a complex equation. Her career trajectory was already set. 

Suzette intercepted a server carrying a tray of okra pimiento fritters, and tasted one. The server stood, silent, his face a map of worry, until Suzette nodded and he left.

“Not as good as Mawmaw’s,” she said to me.

“Nothing ever will be.”

I received another humph as Suzette refocused her attention on using a blowtorch to caramelize brown sugar atop dollops of crème brulee on vanilla wafers. The tray completed, she tucked a strand of blue-black hair under her chef’s toque while a staffer replaced the baking sheet with another. My friend’s features and her cuisine are testimony to her family’s Creole heritage, which dates before the Louisiana Purchase. A client once asked what Creole meant, and Suzette said, “It’s like fine gumbo: a powerful, dark, tantalizing, blend of scrumptious ingredients you can’t quite put your finger on.” I would have added, and loaded with heat.

 “It’s a perfect evening,” I said. 

“Perfect for keeping out of my way.” She worked quickly, a damp sheen on her bronze skin, her braided hair coiled at the nape, as stylish as my humidity-infested curls were random.

“Who stepped on your tail?” I immediately regretted that my tongue had moved faster than my brain. 

Suzette’s expression could have scorched the shine off magnolia leaves. “I’m about to borrow a half million dollars to expand D2C2 and there’s a roomful of potential clients out there. Go butter up some new biscuits for us.” Her voice got louder at the end. 

Owner or not, I obey orders the same as anyone at D2C2, starting a decade ago when I first invested in Suzette’s fledgling company after a family tragedy sent me reeling from Manhattan, my life gone cattywampus. I arrived in Savannah desperate to keep what happened a secret, and mired in guilt for the role I had played. I needed to reinvent myself but I had no clue how to do it. Savannah and Suzette were my saviors: the city held no agonizing memories, and my secret was safe with my friend. 

A bony elbow to my ribs startled me back into the kitchen surroundings. “Take these out,” Suzette said, shoving a platter of desserts at me, “then mingle.” 

I carried the platter to the buffet and the mini-éclairs looked so scrumptious, I plucked one for myself, ruining Suzette’s perfect placement. It was a divine combination of crunchy, sweet, and creamy, so I helped myself to a second. Like Oscar Wilde, I can resist everything but temptation. 

Back in the throng, I spotted our hostess waving me to join her. Celestine Whitney stood beneath a crystal chandelier that tossed rainbows onto an elegant ivory sheath dress that hugged her slim yet curvaceous body. Once upon a time, that silhouette had been mine. I sucked in my tummy and zig-zagged toward her, hoping she would have some juicy gossip, but I stopped like a horse refusing a jump when I recognized the man standing at her side. ###End Chapter One