Topped Chef(63)

“But what’s his point of view?” asked Chef Adam. “If he’s going to star in a network show, I need to know not only who he is but what to expect from his food. Not just his granny’s recipes, but something unique and focused.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that,” I said, feeling irritated by his pompous posturing. He and Buddy actually made a perfectly matched, annoying pair. “How does a chef have a point of view?”

“I don’t know how to say it any plainer. His philosophy. It can’t just be ‘I love my grandma and I love food.’”

“You keep saying that same darned thing, but why not?” I asked. “That’s pretty damn straightforward if you ask me.” The whole conversation had begun to feel like listening in on one of Eric’s troubled families in therapy. Tense and awkward, but without his calm presence to sooth the waters and coax a sense of unity from the family. Instead we had Deena and Peter asking pointed questions and fanning the flames of any friction they spotted. I couldn’t wait for this to be over.

“Before we wrap up,” said Peter, “remember we will be filming the final challenge at 484 Johnson Street at ten a.m. tomorrow. Judges should wear cocktail attire. Chefs—no street clothes. Please come dressed as professionals. You will be preparing your signature dishes. Before you leave, we need your list of ingredients—Deena will be doing all the shopping so we have some quality control. That’s it, people. Be on time tomorrow.”

Quality control—huh. Meaning no one would get sick from eating the food? I unclipped the microphone from my collar, extricated the wire from my shirt, and handed the battery pack over to Deena at the same time Buddy Higgs gave her his scribbled list.

“See you guys tomorrow!” Deena called cheerfully as we headed out the back door of the studio into what was left of the cool January afternoon.

Buddy stumped ahead of me so we wouldn’t have to converse, which only made me certain I should talk to him now while I had the chance. As I hurried to catch up, I decided I would ask him point-blank what kind of relationship he had with Mrs. Rizzoli, because I doubted she’d told me the truth. Maybe it had a bearing on Rizzoli’s murder and maybe it didn’t, but I wouldn’t feel satisfied until I knew.

And maybe I would mention the incident with the chocolate syrup, too. This had weighed on my mind ever since I saw him squirt it on those desserts the other night on the yacht. It wasn’t the fact that he’d used fabricated chocolate whose first listed ingredient was probably corn syrup—the demon of the American obesity epidemic. I understood that not everyone who cooked was a purist (read: food snob) like my mother and me. Lots of normal, hardworking people needed to take shortcuts in their cooking—they didn’t have time to make every dish from scratch. That was okay—better than sacks of greasy fast food or fake food from a box.

What bothered me about the chocolate syrup was the fact that Buddy had pretended he was serving something else. I worried about choosing him as the Top Chef of Key West. I worried about siccing him on the public, to whom he was liable to flat-out lie about how easy a dish was to make and how good it might taste. He turned the corner out of the alley and started down Southard Street.

“Buddy, wait up!” I hollered after him.

He kept going.

“Buddy! Wait!”

He wheeled around, scowling. “I have to get to work.”

I jogged up behind him. “I need just a minute. I didn’t want to ask you in front of the others, but I do have a question. What is your relationship with Mrs. Rizzoli?” Smooth, Hayley, I thought. It would be a miracle if he answered.

Stopping beside him, I smelled the sour odor of old alcohol and garlic, underneath a topcoat of breath mints and sweat. The kind of odor that seeped from your pores after a long night of drinking, that couldn’t be washed off no matter how long the morning shower.

“Why is this any of your business?” he asked. “It isn’t.”

Which hit home. But why was he so defensive? I sidestepped the question of why I was asking and pushed a little harder. “Her husband was killed this week, as you know perfectly well. And then one of us judges was attacked. And then a lady was sickened by food from our contest. If you have some kind of relationship with the dead man’s wife, you need to come clean.” I paused, hands on my hips. “Unless you killed him.”

“Did she put you up to this?” he said, practically hissing.

I shook my head slowly, keeping my gaze pinned on him.

“I screwed her once or twice,” he finally said, almost spitting the ugly words. “That’s it. Her husband was off with another woman. She told me all about it at the bar. She felt devastated, so she said. Like she wasn’t a real woman. So I did her a favor and took her home. A pity poke, that was it.” He wiped his upper lip, where a sheen of sweat had appeared. “There was no relationship. And there sure won’t be now.”