Simmer Down by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant Page A

close at night. The more you feed the staff, the happier they are, and the better job they do for you when you need them.”
    Josh was the kind of chef who worried more about his staff than about himself. He had the worst eating habits and would often eat nothing until late at night after he’d finished work. By then he’d be so hungry that he’d have a huge meal of food from the restaurant, or he and some friends would meet up in Chinatown and binge at Moon Villa. From what I could tell, most chefs ate terribly and lived with chronic heartburn.
    “So what about staffing?” Owen asked with his mouth full. “How many seats are there anyway?”
    “About eighty seats, with another twenty at the bar,” Josh told us. “And in the summer, we’ll open up the patio out front and fit another twenty-five there. The kitchen staff is basically me, Snacker, five other guys to work the line, and two dishwashers. Then there’s front-of-the-house staff. Cole, the general manager, three bartenders, two hostesses, and a bunch of servers.”
    This whole picture started to make me nervous. I was worried that I’d hardly ever see Josh and that when I finally did, he’d be exhausted and destitute. I reminded myself, though, that this job was an emotional and financial investment for everyone involved and that between Gavin’s drive, Josh’s food, and the unbelievable location, there was no way that Simmer could fail.
    Was there?

EIGHT

    HOPING to get off the topic of the work that Josh and Snacker had ahead of them, I changed the subject to the comparatively neutral topic of Oliver’s murder. “So, has everyone seen the news today? There’s been a lot of coverage about what happened last night at the gallery.” I adjusted Lucy so that her head rested in the crook of my other arm. For a six-month-old baby, she was feeling pretty heavy.
    Josh jumped in. “Oh, yeah, Chloe. I forgot to tell you. Detective Hurley stopped in to Simmer today.”
    “Really? What did he want?”
    “He asked me a lot about the ingredients I was using last night. And, get this, he wanted to know if I’d been using any prepackaged food. Can you believe that? Like I had a box of frozen dinners I was heating up? I guess you could count the panko crumbs as prepackaged,” he admitted. “But nothing else. He also wanted to know if I’d seen anyone eating food other than what I’d been making, particularly snack foods. I think there must’ve been traces of some kind of food on Oliver’s body.”
    Prepackaged food. Hannah had been eating those silly snap pea snacks. Hurrah! She’d thrown the Robocoupe at Oliver’s head and then rubbed her green hands all over his body. I should’ve just left her in front of the police station to make her return trip there easier. She had killed Oliver! Hannah in the role of murderer was fine with me, even though I had no idea why she would’ve wanted to kill her wealthy employer, who was clearly taking good care of her. Or had someone else deliberately left trace evidence of green snap pea powder to implicate Hannah? Or the murderer was someone else who liked terrible food? If so, Barry, the victim’s partner, was off the hook. Barry had traveled all over the world in search of fine food, and at the Eliot Davis Gallery, he’d appreciated Josh’s beef medallions and the accompaniments; he certainly hadn’t helped himself to Heather’s nasty snap peas. Barry’s wife, Sarka, was emaciated. At the gallery, I’d wondered whether she had an eating disorder or a serious illness. In either case, it seemed unlikely that she’d been carrying around prepackaged snacks. Then there was Oliver’s widow, Dora, who looked yellowed and ghastly despite Adrianna’s efforts. Could an addiction to junk food account for her unhealthy appearance?
    Before I could begin to mull over possible motives, I was drawn back in to the dinner table conversation. My parents, Heather, Ben, Josh, and I simultaneously told the tale of last