Swap Out! Read online

  No red lights on the cameras now. He was painfully alone, with Mandy. He focused wholly on his prep work.

  “What are you making there?” Her voice sounded barely louder than the slick zip of his knife slipping through the bell peppers. He almost didn’t hear it, but it brought him all the way back to ground, away from his worries about Phillip. She spoke so rarely he cherished each word. Twenty-seven-and-a-half years apart, married to Cruella for six awful years in the middle, and he was still gone on Mandy Peterson.

  “These are pre-prep,” he pointed his knife at the stack of red, green, and yellow bell peppers he’d been slicing. “There isn’t time on camera to do all the cutting and dicing. So I leave one or two of each item unprepared for demonstration, but most of it has to be cut and ready to go.” He finished off the bell pepper and slipped the bowl under the edge of the counter. The cooler next. He pulled the sirloin steaks out of the small cooler he’d brought. He pounded Chinese brown pepper into the sides and whisked up a quick vinaigrette-and-stout-beer marinade.

  “Doesn’t someone do that for you?” She was doing it again. Always had known how to make him comfortable enough to talk. He hadn’t a single secret from this woman, well, only one, but that was a secret from everyone . . . Had to be, though Phillip’s evasiveness last night was worrying him.

  On the other hand, Mandy’s past as well as her thoughts had always been an enigma. She always had a different point of view from his own. Not disagreeing, but more insightful. He’d loved unraveling her occasional offerings strand by strand, until the day they had all unraveled on him at once.

  Deep breath, Davis. Deep breath. But the air, all knotted up in his chest, didn’t have the decency to cooperate.

  He laved the meat in the marinade and slid it into the comfortably cluttered side-by-side fridge. “No one touches my ingredients. Fresh from the market into my bag this morning. My bag to this cutting board.”

  He’d always done that. And now, with Julio’s death by bad shellfish, he had another reason to be glad that he did. Who knew where Julio’s prep materials came from? Unlike Jeff, he’d been mostly a showman and done his best not to be bothered with the actual cooking. That was why Julio always threw out his food. He never worried about nailing down the final taste on camera, just the look and presentation.

  “They can no taste it on the television, so who cares. In the cookbooks I get the flavors right, what do I care in the television kitchen.” They’d had good-natured fights over that many times, though Julio could cook wonderfully when he put his mind to it.

  Jeff’s present audience of one was waiting for more.

  “I do all the prep. For tricky dishes I make the swap outs at home.”

  She didn’t even have to speak her question, he could read the query in her stillness.

  He hadn’t had this attentive an audience in a long time. Nor one he wanted to please so desperately. Whatever you’ve become, Jeffrey Davis, TV star and all, don’t let it go to your head. You’re still a young buck in heat over a past so long gone you almost managed to block it out.

  Only he hadn’t.

  And he’d never, ever forget the wonder of Mandy standing in the middle of his living room, exactly where she’d belonged. The real quandary, that he was completely unready to face, was his desperate desire to see her stand there again. Slight, gentle, and every inch the most attractive woman he’d ever met.

  Julio had never understood the difference between beautiful and attractive. Jeff always had. And Mandy Peterson was his dictionary definition of both. A wonder to look at, and she drew at some part of him that he’d thought dead and gone. Instead it had lain in silence for a quarter of a century, buried somewhere deep until the moment she’d stepped back into his life.

  Was that what she was? Back in his life?

  He fussed a poor-man’s corn chowder into various stages of readiness while he searched hard for a steady voice she wouldn’t be able to read anything into.

  “Swap out. Some dishes I’ll have two or three swap outs. Most have more. They might be: raw ingredients, chilled pie dough so I can show how to roll it out, baked pie shell and fully prepped fillings, and a baked pie. No breaks allowed in the live format and I sometimes double-tier things. If I destroy a soup stock, I can pull a direct swap out during the commercial.”

  He dug a cherry pitter and a plastic sack of dark purple-red cherries from his bag and started punching out the pits. Mandy stole a cherry and ate it delicately. Second dish, a dark chocolate-Bing cherry sorbet, a fall dessert.

  “Third time I went live I had to eat a curdled disaster of clotted cream and vinegar because I’d grabbed the wrong squeeze bottle. Making that Alfredo sauce look good was perhaps my greatest moment of true acting.”

  It had also been the moment that made him. He’d warned his counter-guests during the commercial break not to taste that one dish and hammed it up for the audience who had dissolved in gales of laughter. The director had run the bit on the Internet. The on-line crowd had inhaled it like pasta and the breaks were now a significant feature of his show. The advertisers also didn’t complain about the second chance to pitch their wares on-line.

  It had also reshaped the industry. The first truly live cooking show. Not some carefully edited byproduct of seventy-five minutes and a dozen retakes hashed into forty-two minutes with commercials. He couldn’t afford any boring bits to be edited out later. None of the flat-feeling so common to one-time live events. He’d turned being a television chef into a complexly orchestrated act of performance art and food.

  Then, after Julio and three other networks had jumped on board, his became the first show designed to have no breaks. Commercials on television, but continuous live on the Internet, with product placement to keep the advertisers happy. No one else had made that crossover yet. His money had been on Maggie Hadderly being the first to make the leap. He closed his eyes a moment and then refound his topic and his audience of one.

  “I was stuck with that curdled Alfredo taste on my palette for days. I still can’t eat an Alfredo, barely look at them.”

  Her gentle laugh was reward enough to make up for the moment now two years gone. He pulled a liter of water from his bag and an empty Grey Goose bottle. He poured one into the other, recapped both, and tucked them back into his bag.

  “Can’t have a drunken chef, can we?” He winked at her.

  Mandy shook her head and smiled all the way, the first true smile she’d aimed his direction since her return yesterday. The goosebumps rolled up his arms all the way to his short-sleeved shirt in happy little tidal waves.

  She rested her elbow on the counter and placed her chin in one fine hand. The sea and gray eyes captured his every motion and he knew from experience that the steel-trap mind wouldn’t miss or forget a thing. How had he ever walked away from this woman? So, she’d refused his proposal, on bended knee, ring and all. So square for children of the sixties.

  He shouldn’t have left, but he’d had to. Couldn’t risk his discovery…

  “We missed you.”

  A corn cob he’d been stripping the kernels off slipped from his fingers, slithered across the board, and balanced for a moment on the edge of the sink.

  “Phillip never missed anyone in his life.” He grabbed for the cob.

  “Ashlyn and me.”

  He missed his grab. The corn tipped away, fell into the sink, and down into the Disposall.

  Her little girl. The result of a college fling before his time, the father not around long enough to know of the fruit born. Two years old and cute as could be when Jeff had appeared on the scene. Five and beyond adorable when he’d disappeared.

  Ashlyn would have laughed with a giggle almost as silly as her mother’s as he fished after the corn.

  CHAPTER 10

  Mandy submitted happily to wardrobe and makeup when the time came. Phillip’s tirade against being dand
ied up for the camera didn’t end until they showed him a test shot. Instead of a balding, out-of-shape, rumpled, and utterly brilliant scientist, the screen showed a charming man in his mid-years looking like a wealthy professional on holiday.

  And Mandy went from merely beautiful to drop-dead gorgeous. Here in his studio, his second home, sitting just across the counter. She was the image of what every woman wanted to grow up to be. The camera director clearly knew it and moved Mandy to the seat closer to center stage despite her protests of wishing to remain in the background. He moved her so close in it would be automatic for the cameras to capture Jeff and Mandy instead of Jeff alone.

  Jeff had walked away from the Enclave of Mad Scientists for self-survival. There were moral realities that had forced him to burn all his research and leave his career. But, as Phillip and Mandy had reminded him so thoroughly and insistently last night, EMS, properly named Environmental Mitigation Services, still had desperate importance and need. He’d never known of their massive impact on modern culture. From Vitamin D research to hybrid vehicles, EMS had made hundreds of not just inventions, but discoveries. The mapping of the human genome had been one of their triumphs and there had never been a single hint that Craig Venter and Velera Genomics was almost wholly an EMS-backed and manned program.

  But no matter how Jeff pushed, Phillip hadn’t made it clear why they wanted him back. Merely that, “No,” on Jeff’s part was not an acceptable answer.

  Granted he was a former scientist, now a genuine celebrity. Phillip spun some hokey line that EMS was finally ready to go public after three decades of absolute silence. Jeff hadn’t even been sure they were still a going concern. After all, EMS was just a crazy idea he’d tossed across a friendly meal at the old farmhouse in upstate New Hampshire.

  Phillip argued that they needed Jeff’s skills at managing a presentation at the national level to do it right. The Enclave was at long last ready to step forward into the klieg lighting.

  And they were right. Jeff would know exactly how to promote them. EMS was in full swing and Phillip listed dozens of concepts that were nearing fruition in the EMS labs.

  The man was convincing, but it didn’t quite hold together. EMS had always found quiet avenues to release its most successful inventions. High-stress plastics, viable airbags for cars, and consumer GPS were all apparently EMS originals, released without the high profile front end. But the more Phillip pushed, the more Jeff heard an unstated second agenda.

  And getting reinvolved with EMS had its own hazards. He hoped to God that Phillip didn’t know the real reason for his departure. Now there was an interesting thought. If Phillip did know he’d have blurted it out, at the least the Phillip of a couple decades ago. Mandy he was less sure about. Though she was never one to play coy, there was a world of secrets behind those frank, assessing eyes. She’d been silent last night and gone to bed early. Phillip had kept at him all night.

  If he weren’t wound up for the show, he could crash and sleep the clock round.

  The show.

  Jeff shook his head. Do the show now, think about EMS later. Think about Mandy and her enchanting daughter, almost his step-daughter, much later. Both could have been his family but for two meager letters, one of the English language’s shortest words, “No.”

  “Ready in five?” Mike, the Assistant Director startled him from his thoughts.

  “Sure.” He was just fooling around at this point. Everything was in place. He waved a hand at his trademark Birkenstocks, white khakis, and stone-washed denim shirt.

  The floor director came over to check in, mike and headset combo slid down loose around his neck.

  “No seafood?” Sam’s voice was droll.

  “Not this show.” Jesus, talk about graveyard humor. They’d both known Julio well.

  “I’m not even using the oven.”

  That shut Sam up. Mike scooted off without further comment.

  Julio had found a truly lousy way to go to the big checkout stand in the sky, right down to killing a show guest. Epidemiology had not turned up a pattern of bad shellfish anywhere else in Manhattan, at least not in the seventeen hours since the cause of death had been certified. His wife was under arrest for suspicion of murder and his ex-mistress would probably be dragged in for questioning.

  Maggie Hadderly had been intentionally torched. The police continued to point to her legendary promiscuity. She’d apparently jilted the wrong lover, at least that’s what the detectives were saying. The gossip columns were offering page-long lists in speculation, including himself he was amused to note, though he’d never met the woman. The detectives had offered that dead end epitaph, “no leads we can comment on at this time.” The perfect crime had made national television.

  But neither felt right. He’d liked both Julio’s wife and mistress. Becky and Bobbi Jean were decent women attracted to a man who wasn’t capable of caring about them more than a favored pet.

  And Maggie Hadderly, napalm. Not rocket science, but it wasn’t exactly lying around on the streets either. Who was killing the chefs? He scanned the room. No new crew or staffers. All familiar faces. Certainly Mandy and Phillip weren’t threats. Couldn’t be. Could they? They were certainly a new element in his life. But were there others? A different grocer? No. The doormen at his building hadn’t changed in half a dozen years.

  In the studio. He looked around. Sam, Mike, Carla, and Pearl. He knew every crew member, even the ones whose names he was unsure of.

  Mandy was watching him.

  “Nothing.” He turned to the mirror on the inside of a cupboard door for a last makeup check and he could see her reflected skepticism.

  “Nothing.” But it was little more than a whisper that even he didn’t believe. Chefs with television personalities and, actually more importantly, chefs that the camera liked, was a very small club. Counted in the couple of dozen at most, they were suddenly two fewer than they’d been forty-eight hours before.

  CHAPTER 11

  Two down, one to go.

  Jeff the Chef Davis knew he was on a roll as he smacked the side of the knife blade with his palm. The garlic crushed with a satisfying crunch and the aroma filled the air.

  Two dishes perfect. Now the show finisher.

  He began rocking the knife back and forth rapidly over the garlic, making a fine mince. The big ten-inch chef’s knife was a wonderful and fearsome kitchen tool. He preferred an eight-inch Henckel for everyday use at home, but the HCK-Haslinger ten-inch looked exceptionally flashy on camera. It was also near enough a perfect knife, two thousand dollars of custom, ladder-form Damascus steel made him feel top-notch in the studio. The fossil mammoth-ivory handle was a bit over the top, but felt sinfully luxurious against his palm.

  Usually he planned a minor side dish or dessert at the end, but this time the main course synched up better with the commercial breaks. The opening sorbet was chilling and the poor-man’s chowder simmered quietly on the back burner. This was the last episode of his “Easy Dinners for Every Household” series. Southeast Asian fusion cooking started next week, Top Chef’s Hung Huynh would be his first guest chef. But for one more show he was Mr. Everyman of the Kitchen.

  He glanced at Sam the same instant the stage manager held up four fingers. Exactly four minutes prime-time until the last commercial. He was so in the groove.

  The knife was singing as the camera panned down from his face to his hands to show that his lightning-fast mincing with the massive blade was perfect, even though he wasn’t looking down. He watched his hands for a moment on the monitor to make sure he was keeping smooth knife control even as his brain pulled up the needed patter.

  “Garlic is the first ingredient of the marinade for today’s final dish. Garlic stores wonderfully, until cut. Then it loses its flavor quite rapidly. Garlic in a jar or tube? Don’t waste your time. It makes your dish bitter rather than bringing it to life.”

 
He chatted casually with appropriately attentive Phillip and Mandy, the camera snuggling right in.

  Jeff the Chef, Up Close and Personal. That was the key to his show. And this show was more personal than most; young, okay, not-so-young stud showing off for his girl. His ex-girl, but he’d worry about that later.

  He built his newly developed stout-beer marinade step by descriptive step and slid the beautiful rib eye steaks into the liquid nearly as rich as a gravy. At the last moment he knew what was missing. There was a prop fruit basket on the counter, brilliant oranges, dusky apples, and glaring lemons. Lemon, the dish needed some lemon zest. After only a moment’s debate he grabbed the lemon and began shaving it quickly while describing it to the audience.

  Mandy tilted her head ever so slightly. Okay, it wasn’t one of his own ingredients. But the ones he was really going to cook were still chilling in the fridge and they wouldn’t have the lemon zest in them. She straightened her head tilt when she saw him glance toward the fridge. Loud and clear, in perfect sync as they’d always been. Soul-to-soul they’d called it, deeper than heart-to-heart. Not merely a physical connection or an emotional one. It was too complete for that.

  “I’ve trimmed the fat off these four steaks and rather than frying on oil or a bed of salt, I just marinade the daylights out of them.” He carried it to the fridge while doing the obligatory talk about a minimum of an hour for your marinade to really take hold in the beef. He pulled the pre-marinated steaks from the fridge and returned them to the counter, the show’s last swap out.

  “An hour is good, three is better. If you have twenty-four hours, squeeze in half a lemon, the meat will be incredibly tender because the lemon juice acid actually precooks the meat.”

  He dropped them onto the cast iron griddle with a casual toss he’d spent a thousand meals perfecting. The pan erupted with a loud sizzle of spattering boiling marinade, but he’d long since learned not to flinch at a little bit of heat. If you can’t take the heat, you shouldn’t be in the kitchen. Or under studio lights. He’d been so distracted making a perfect Swiss cheese and mushroom omelet for Mandy this morning that he’d forgotten his antiperspirant. If the stove and the lights cooked him much more, he’d start really sweating.