Mumbo Gumbo (12 page)

I
t was close to midnight when I pulled up in front of my house on Whitley Avenue and parallel-parked Holly’s little red punch buggie so it blocked the driveway. My garage is so crammed with odd pieces of furniture I pick up at swap meets, dozens of table rounds that we use for the parties we cater, and boxes of dishes from the thirties that I haven’t been able to actually park a car in it for years. My old Jeep Grand Wagoneer had been left parked on the KTLA lot, but Wesley had come to my rescue. He got a ride over to the studio and picked it up for me. It was back home now, as usual, dealing with the night air out in the driveway.

I walked up the flight of stairs to my front door. Hillside homes require a little more exercise to access than others, but the view is usually worth it. In my case, I have a nifty view of the hills on one side. However, my property actually borders the Hollywood Freeway on the other side, so from
that
angle I have the view of a particularly prosaic sound wall. Such real estate challenges make for that ultra-rare affordable property. One man’s disgusting anchovy becomes another’s delicious Caesar dressing. I say it’s all a matter
of taste. The sound of eight lanes of rushing freeway traffic coming from just beyond the sound wall was something I’d learned to get used to, and now it blurs into a sort of ocean roar. Billionaires pay millions for that very sound, when it’s coming from the Pacific.

After I’d left Tim Stock’s house on Lemon Grove Drive, I stopped briefly at a pay phone on Ventura to check messages on my machine. I retrieved my voice mail to discover that Holly had decided to stay on at Donald’s for the night. No reason to stop by and pick her up, as Donald had offered to drop her off tomorrow. They had a lot of “talking” to do, she euphemistically chirped in her message. I shook my head, and yet, I could hardly fault Holly for doing what I was doing, allowing the men we cared about one more chance.

Before I could put the key in the door lock, my front door opened. Wesley was in the house, waiting for me.

“Hey, you,” I said. “I didn’t see your car.”

“My contractor drove it over after he dropped me off at the studio to pick up your truck. I told him to park up on Iris Circle,” Wes said. “I figured we might have too many cars down in the cul-de-sac tonight and I didn’t want any of our friends getting tickets.”

“Thanks, Wes.” I gave him a hug. “I’m so glad you could come over. I’m just incredibly awake and there are too many thoughts.” I had phoned Wes from Studio City and filled him in as best I could. He’d agreed to come over and talk. We had a lot to catch up on. As I followed him back through the dim hallways to the kitchen, I was glad once again he was so fabulous with food.

“A little midnight snack?” Wes asked, giving a Vanna White gesture in the direction of the center island.

“Oh, man. I don’t think I’ve had anything to eat since breakfast.”

Set out on the old worn butcher-block countertop was a beautiful antique linen napkin positioned like a place mat. Atop the crisp ivory napkin was a cobaltblue plate heaped high with a seafood medley.

“Ceviche?” I asked.

“Maine lobster, sea scallops, and Pacific oysters marinated in lime juice and cilantro,” Wes confirmed.

Beside the plate of the most lavish ceviche on the planet, was a large, shallow bowl containing one of my favorite things, green asparagus risotto with wild mushrooms and aged Parmesan. Wesley knew I loved it. Steam was still rising from the wide-rimmed white bowl. “I’m embarrassed to tell you how starving I am.”

“Start eating,” Wes said, pleased. There are no words sweeter to a chef than those of a hungry diner. “And I have a chocolate tart with orange-caramel sauce for dessert. I brought you my leftovers. I ate hours ago.”

“You cooked all this tonight at your place?”

“Well, I was celebrating. Go ahead and eat. I’ll have dessert with you.”

Setting down my red canvas bag on the end of the island, I pulled out a chair and quickly picked up my fork. The sweet lobster in Wesley’s fabulous ceviche was completely sinful. “Wes. So fresh. So light. This is incredible. We should do this for a luncheon, don’t you think? Those ladies in Bel-Air would love this for their mah-jongg party.”

He smiled. “I’ve really missed you like crazy, Mad. Tell me everything. What the hell is going on at
Food Freak
?”

“It’s like a whirling, swirling feeling every minute I’m there, Wes. And I can’t always tell if it’s a giddiness type of swirling, you know, from mainlining Hollywood glamour, or if it’s more like a disaster-upon-us, toilet-flushing type of swirling…”

Wes began to laugh out loud.

“Don’t laugh. It’s like the water is rising and I’m in way over my head.”

“Elegantly put.”

“I’m learning from Greta Greene. She has a way with a metaphor.” I finished the ceviche in record time and began on the risotto. “I’m dying, this is so good.”

“Ah,” Wes said, giving me an affectionate smile. “So tell more. Details.”

“I’m eating here.”

“I don’t care. You tell me you’re being flushed down the tubes, I want to know everything.” With that, he poured each of us a chilled glass of Chalk Hill Sonoma Chardonnay, a ‘98, and I told him all the odd things that had happened that day. As we sipped our wine and I finished my meal, I told him about Tim Stock’s office and the secret bedchamber we discovered behind the bookcases; about the office break-in and the necessity of canceling today’s taping; about Chef Howie and his manager-wife Fate; about Greta’s concern that everything be kept quiet, no matter what; about the office cleanup with Holly and getting knocked out; about Artie Herman and Susan Anderson and Jennifer Klein and Quentin Shore; about finding the recent issue of
Gourmet
magazine under the bed in the secret room and going out to see Tim Stock’s house for myself; about the fire in Studio City and Tim’s body, found at the scene. By the time Wes was serving each of us a generous slice of the chocolate
tart, I had run out of story, but not out of questions.

“You know what bothers me the most?” I asked.

“Not knowing everything,” Wes answered. “You like to know how everything works and who everyone is and what it all means.”

“Yes,” I said. Wes understood me better than anyone, but of course, we had been friends a long time. We met in northern California where I had become a sous chef at a legendary foodie restaurant that is now a gourmet mecca. I’d just finished at the Culinary Institute in San Francisco. Wes had been doing graduate work in chemistry at Berkeley, but he has many talents and interests and had always been an artist at heart. In those days, he wasn’t very happy. He used to hang out at the bar of the restaurant where I worked, order the best wines on the menu, and then offer me a glass as we closed the place.

Timing is everything. Wesley Westcott and I became friends at a time when both of our lives needed major course corrections. I’d had a serious disappointment. I had just been let down by the one man I’d ever loved, the man I was planning to marry. Things were dark for me that year. And Wes had come to a crossroads of his own. After years of scholastic achievements and awards, Wes wanted to skip out on academia and start over. He had more of a taste for the world and a riskier nature than was satisfied teaching lecture halls full of college freshmen. He suggested we go down to Los Angeles, and I agreed to be his partner in a start-up catering company when we could afford to start a business.

With a few local references, I was able to land a job cooking for a little café in West Hollywood while Wesley began tutoring at UCLA. Before long, customers at
the restaurant began asking me to cook for their private parties. One fan of my cooking was a producer who offered Wes and me the chance to cater the meals on the set of his soap opera, and soon we found ourselves too busy to keep up with our day jobs. We had a business. But through it all, Wesley and I had vowed to keep our friendship above our work relationship, and we had settled into a most compatible arrangement.

“It is so frustrating,” I said. “If I knew more about things on
Food Freak,
then I’d know if I could do anything to help,” I continued. “Frankly, the way I’ve been going at it, I can’t tell if I’m helping or hurting.” My teeth sank into the deep, dark, chocolate tart filling, and somehow, everything seemed a little better. Chocolate will do that.

“Well, I think you’re learning plenty,” Wes said. “Hey, you’ve only been there for a week.”

I was ready for some tea and went to fill the kettle. I placed it on the gas burner, and began clearing the plates and tidying up. “Now you have to tell me about you,” I insisted. “What did you say earlier? You cooked this amazing meal to celebrate? I need some good news.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” Wes said. “It’s about the house.”

Wesley had begun buying wonderful old distressed houses and then renovating them with an architecture fan’s sensibility back to their original grace and beauty. Then, Los Angeles real estate being what it is, he turned around and sold them for a very nice profit. There were many successful people with good taste and deep pockets but without the time or talent to fix up a house. In the present boom market, finding tarnished real estate gems and polishing them had become
Wesley’s hobby. With a good credit rating and the help of bank loans, it was also an excellent way for Wes to invest his down payment and fix-up money along with his design genius and hard work and make a good return. On the other hand, there was always a risk. Wes was in a perpetual state of concern about when the real estate bubble would burst, but so far he had not had to face that dilemma.

Each new project pushed his luck a bit further. If between the time he bought a wreck and the time it took to fix up and sell, home prices went steeply downward, he might not be able to pay back the mortgage. But Wes loved houses. He loved bringing an old neglected beauty back into her glory. Normally, he considered the risk one he could manage. But with our party bookings practically nonexistent, Wes now needed to make a profit on his hobby and quickly turn over his current fixer.

His latest project was a big old mansion in Los Feliz, but what he had originally estimated would take two months to refurbish had dragged on and on. He’d had a double crew working on it for about four months now, and it seemed it would never be completed. He had been discovering new problems that needed to be corrected every week, from the foundation to the attic. I would never have the patience.

“Don’t tell me it’s done?” I guessed. “Are you listing it?” That would be ample reason to celebrate. This had been the largest project Wesley had ever taken on, maybe too large. The house was 4,800 square feet of mess. Everything needed to be done to it, from refinishing the floors to reroofing. If it was ready to list with a broker, Wes might be able to sell it in a month
or two and get his money out a few months after that. Which, let’s face it, he dearly needed. Wesley’s side job required that he sink every spare penny into a big old unlivable house, and until this house was sold, Wes had very little money to live on.

“It’s better than that,” Wes said, accepting the cup of tea I presented. “It’s sold.”

“What?”

“Sold.” Wes stirred in two packets of Sweet’n Low and smiled.

“How? When? What happened?”

“A guy has been cruising by the house. I’ve seen him go by. And last night he stopped and asked when we would have the house ready.”

“Some guy who lives in the neighborhood?” I asked.

“He lives about two blocks up, on Chiselhurst. He actually thought about buying my house when it was listed for probate last year and I bought it, but he couldn’t stand how filthy it was.”

“The wimp,” I said. “So now it’s beautiful and clean and he wants to buy it from you?”

“No. Now he already bought it from me. We’re in escrow.”

“What!”

“I can’t believe it, either. And it’s an all-cash deal, Madeline.”

All cash. The holy grail of real estate sales. It meant the buyer didn’t need to qualify for a bank loan. It meant the house needed only to pass inspection.

“How did you do this?” I asked, amazed and so happy for him.

“I live a clean life,” Wes said, virtuously.

“Who is he?”

“Erik Whalen. Know him?”

“Why is that name familiar?”

“He’s got a band. The Golden Crows. He’s going to move into my house, apparently, and then tear apart his house up the street and turn it into a recording studio or something.”

“Oh, man. That’s so hot. The Golden Crows are huge, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know, Madeline. All I know is the man has a British accent and over two million dollars in cash. He stops his car at the curb and buys a house out in the street. I love that guy. I love the Golden Crows, whatever music they play. I’ll even go out and buy one of their CDs.”

I raised my cup of tea to Wes. “Congratulations. This has got to be the start of good news from now on.”

“Here, here.” Wes raised his teacup and sipped.

“You tired?” I asked him after checking my watch. It was after one-thirty.

“Are you kidding?”

“I wanted you to look at something.” I reached over and grabbed one of the handles on my canvas purse and dragged it closer. From inside I pulled out Tim Stock’s copy of
Gourmet
magazine.

“So that’s the magazine you found in that hidden room next to Stock’s office?”

“Yep. I have flipped through it and there’s something funny.”

Wes moved his chair closer to mine and I paged through the glossy magazine, filled with exotic recipes and lush photos. “What are those?” Wes asked, stopping one of the pages I’d been fluttering and pointing
to a headline. It read: “Culinary Quickies in Ten Minutes or Less.” The word “Culinary” was marked with a yellow highlighter pen.

“I know. There are dozens and dozens of them. Just single words or even a few letters, but they aren’t necessarily important words. What can it mean?”

Wes took the magazine and started again, from the beginning. “You have a pen?”

“Sure.” I found one in my bag and then grabbed a blank pad of paper from the kitchen counter.