Roux Morgue
by Claire M. Johnson
Summary
Back at her alma mater, pastry chef Mary Ryan tries to teach the art of baking while the bodies start piling up around her. Blackmail, extortion, money laudering, and murder is all in a day’s work.
Excerpt
If he didn’t shut up and stop attacking that plate, I was going to hurl myself across the table, grab his fork, and stab him with it.
I coughed to sneak a glance at my watch. I’d been smiling non-stop for exactly one hour and forty-three minutes. The longer I maintained this false bonhomie, the crankier I got. By this point, it didn’t feel like a smile so much as a bad case of lockjaw. Benson kept scraping his fork across his plate in a precise effort to capture every milligram of his dessert. He’d been prattling non-stop for the last fifteen minutes, only pausing to make determined grooves on a plate that couldn’t have been cleaner than if it had been through an autoclave. With every pass, my ballistic meter rose a few notches. We were now at level “irritable” and heading into “dangerous.” He’d been dangling this job in front of me for nearly two hours, keeping the taste of financial solvency just out of reach.
“We now have a total of ten schools,” scrape, “in six states,” chafe, “each one with four hundred students, and,” grind, “plans to open in five more states by the end of next year.”
December 12th. I’d been without a job since mid-October. Bob Benson and I were negotiating my hire for after the New Year. If I was lucky, on January 4th I’d begin teaching students how to bake. In fancy terms: pastry. That’s what I do, I’m a pastry chef. And when Bob isn’t beating up china, he’s dean of École d’Epicure in San Francisco, one of the first and best professional cooking schools in the country.
If I was unlucky, I’d be making Christmas presents for my family out of those plastic baskets that strawberries come in.
The dining room had been done for the holidays. Elaborate swags of candy pink and white-stripped satin festooned the walls, culminating in big, cheery bows every fifteen feet. In my ten-year old black linen suit and a cashmere sweater sporting a gigantic moth hole in the cuff—which I discovered halfway through lunch—I felt like a ninety-nine-cent present wrapped in an elaborately beribboned box.
We were the only diners left.
With another scrape of Benson’s fork, my smile slipped. The cranky meter shot passed “dangerous” and was hovering dangerously close to “fury.” Even though I possess the business savvy of a kumquat, no hint of impatience or garden-variety ennui could cross my face. I’d be fired before I’d been hired.
Memo to self: mortgage payment, Mary Ryan, mortgage payment.
Grabbing my coffee cup, I swilled down the entire contents, ignoring the little rivulets of pain as the scalding coffee scorched my throat. By the time the cup was back in its saucer, the smile was back in place. I needed this job, and if it required parking my self-respect at the door, I’d do it.
Reviews
"This enjoyable romp should gain Johnson new fans"--Publishers Weekly
"Food Channel addicts will enjoy the inside details on cooking school politics"--Library Journal
"Sexual tension, cooking tips and a neatly packaged mystery. All in all, a tasty tale"--Kirkus Reviews
Author's Biography
Claire M. Johnson worked as a pastry chef for eight years. Set in the restaurant world, Ms. Johnson’s first novel, Beat Until Stiff, was nominated for the 2003 Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel in this series, Roux Morgue, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.