Fairbanks, Nancy

  CRIME BRULEE by Nancy Fairbanks.

  Prologue

  Life doles out the most amazing surprises, not all of them pleasant. For instance, who could have imagined that I would find myself in New Orleans trying to solve a mystery, which no one, including the police, seemed to find mysteri­ous at all?

  To point out how incongruous the situation was, I should introduce myself: I am Carolyn Blue, a forty-something pro­fessor's wife, mother of two, and novice food writer—not a promising résumé' for even the most amateur of detectives, and my adult life heretofore contains nothing to recommend me for my self-imposed assignment, the location of a miss­ing person.

  How astounded I would have been at the age of twenty had I been able to foresee myself enmeshed in a mission that ultimately proved to be quite terrifying. As an undergradu­ate, I believed, with my contemporaries, that thirty was the age at which adventure and commitment to ideals ended, the age when one, if still alive, became a fuddy-duddy. Which is not to say that Jason and I were rebellious types, storming administration buildings, occupying the offices of deans, and shouting unpleasant epithets at police officers. We were much too busy for that, he working on a doctorate in sci­ence, I pursuing an undergraduate degree in medieval his­tory. We didn't even smoke pot or take hallucinogenic drugs.

  I'm sure our children are profoundly appreciative of that abstinence, since they are both normal, intelligent young people with no sign of chromosomal damage. Also they are now away at college, the beneficiaries of generous scholar­ships that save their gratified parents from being dragged into poverty by the weight of onerous tuition payments.

  Jason, my husband, is a university professor and re­spected scientist. I, having resisted the feminist impetus to go out and accomplish something in a high-powered job, spent my twenties, thirties, and a bit of my forties raising my children and giving charming dinner parties for my hus­band's colleagues, both foreign and domestic.

  Although I was quite content during those years, I must admit that I no longer have much interest in elaborate gourmet projects. In fact, I have become quite addicted to OPC (other people's cooking). I'll eat just about anything that isn't prepared in my own kitchen by me.

  Being a semi retired mother and hostess, I have become an Accompanying Person. Perhaps you're not familiar with the term. An Accompanying Person is the spouse or signifi­cant other of a scientist attending a conference away from home, perhaps even in another country. I find travel a de­lightful pastime, one of its greatest benefits being that the traveller is not expected to cook. Entertainment and even meals are provided for Accompanying Persons by the scien­tific group hosting the conference. I am showered with tours, lunches, and banquets in exotic places.

  Even more amazing, this new freedom to accompany my husband has provided me with a career, one that is begin­ning to generate an income. I haven't had a paying job since I fell in love with Jason, who was the graduate assistant in a perfectly deadly science course the university forced me to take. We married after a year's courtship and were supported by my family and his fellowship while he completed his doctorate and I my bachelor's degree in a subject that was, although fascinating to me and approved by my father, not one with much appeal to prospective employers.

  I had Christopher, my first child, while Jason was a post­doctoral fellow and Gwen, my independent daughter, when he became an assistant professor at another institution. After he became a full professor and the children had gone off to college, Jason decided, to the astonishment of all, including me, to take a different job in an unlikely place, but that's an­other story.

  Not a very exciting history, you might say, until I took it into my head, after a trip to Spain, to write an article for the newspaper in El Paso, Texas, our new location. The story was entitled "Goats are Tastier than You'd Think," and was probably accepted for publication because people in El Paso and Mexico actually eat goat. My inspiration was a mildly amusing series of events, or mishaps, if you will.

  In Madrid, Jason and I went to a charming restaurant that had a menu in many languages, English among them. I or­dered lamb, of which I am very fond, and there was some confusion with the waiter, who didn't speak English or un­derstand it and couldn't read the English menu when we pointed to my selection. Then the entree arrived, a dainty leg of something crisscrossing my plate. Knowing what leg of lamb looks like, I was sure I hadn't gotten it. Nonetheless, I was inspired to adventure by the novelty of eating in a new country and sampled my mystery entree. The meat was very rich, somewhat greasy, and had an ambrosial marinade on the skin.

  "What can it be?" I marvelled.

  When I gave Jason a bite, he informed me that I was eat­ing goat, or cabrito (baby goat), as it is called in Juarez, Mexico, where Jason ordered and enjoyed it while enter­taining a seminar speaker from Belgium. You can imagine how taken aback I was. Jason, however, expressed envy. During the second half of our trip, when we were attending a meeting in Catalonia, a province on the eastern coast of Spain, I once again ordered lamb. This time Jason ordered goat, but when our plates came, I had received another goat's leg, and Jason had been served fish. We were both frustrated and complained, not that our protests registered with our non-English-speaking waiter or influenced his em­ployer, who settled the dispute by pointing to the menu en­tries we had chosen and then to the entrees we had received. As far as the owner was concerned, I had ordered goat and my husband had ordered fish. Jason admitted that his fish was very tasty but claimed half of my goat to assuage his disappointment.

  I found the whole incident much more amusing than Jason, although I never did get to sample lamb in Spain, where I had assumed it would be not only excellent but read­ily available. I have read that many immigrant shepherds in the western United States were Basque. Actually, I don't suppose the Basques consider themselves Spanish. For that matter, the Catalans don't, either, and they speak a different language, which may account for the fact that I missed get­ting lamb a second time.

  But as I said, I submitted an article about eating goat in Spain to our local newspaper. For a wonder, they published my contribution, which was then picked up by other papers in the chain and evidently appeared all over the country. One day while I was loading the dishwasher, I received a tele­phone call from a literary agent in New York who said that she had read my goat piece and asked if I did much travel­ing.

  "Well, yes, a bit," I said modestly. "I travel with my hus­band."

  "I wonder if you'd be interested in writing a book of anecdotes about eating abroad?"

  Needless to say, I was quite astounded and replied, "My next trip is not abroad. We're going to New Orleans."

  "Even better," she said. "I know just the publisher for a book on eating in New Orleans." As it happened, she did. The publisher was duly contacted and offered me an ad­vance to write the book, which is why, as I said, I have a sort of job and why I found myself searching a strange city (and New Orleans really is strange) for Julienne Magnussen, although none of our friends seemed to think she was actually missing. However, I knew that my childhood friend would never have missed the crawfish Etienne, much less the seafood gumbo, unless something dreadful had happened to keep her from the table.

  1

  The Menu at Etienne’s

  Any cook who aspires to duplicate Cajun or Creole cooking must be willing to master the art of making roux, that seemingly simple mixture of flour with oil, butter, or—horror of horrors!—lard. To produce a cup of roux, begin with a cup each of all-purpose flour and of the oil or fat of choice. Place the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet, and whisk in the flour. (Traditionalists and those who have sufficient upper-body strength rec­ommend a cast-iron skillet.) Then cook slowly, stirring without pause while keepi
ng an anxious eye on the mix­ture. If your roux burns, it must be discarded. Other­wise, it will ruin whatever dish you add it to—unless you happen to favor food with a bitter taste. How long must you stir? That depends on the color at which you're aiming. For tan, 10 to 12 minutes; for medium-dark roux, 15 to 18; for dark-brown roux, 20 to 25 min­utes.

  In these days of public consciousness regarding repetitive motion injuries, one must wonder if New Or­leans doctors are keeping statistics on such ailments as roux elbow and roux-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm told that a treasured gift in Louisiana is a jar of roux made by a master of the art. Perhaps you can make friends with such a person. I, for one, would be de­lighted to exchange an artfully arranged Christmas as­sortment of Mesilla Valley pecans for a jar of New Orleans roux.

  Carolyn Blue, Eating Out in the Big Easy.

  The opportunity was a meeting of the American Chemi­cal Society to be held in New Orleans, the occasion a din­ner, which I would arrange for three other couples, companions from our student days. I was somewhat nervous about my plan, although the eight of us were the closest of friends when we attended the university together, working on graduate and undergraduate degrees. But I haven't seen most of them in over twenty years. Of course, Jason, my husband, runs into those who attend the same scientific meetings, but for me it's been a matter of garnering news of the others at second hand, and my husband isn't given to collecting personal details and passing them on. He's much more likely to tell me about a paper given by one of our friends and the questions asked by the audience.

  There have been notes at Christmastime, to be sure, and they sometimes included pictures of children and pets, and I have kept in closer touch with Julienne Magnussen. We talk by phone several times a year, send letters and E-mails, and get together when we're both home to visit our families. Julienne and I have been best friends since childhood. Sev­eral times a week for the last two months, she has E-mailed me to add to the list of sights she plans to show me when we meet in New Orleans, the city of her birth. But the other five people, including Julienne's husband Nils, are in the nature of friends one remembers with affection from youth, friends whose lives are familiar in outline, although when one thinks of them at all, one wonders whether they might not have changed into entirely different people over the years. Several of them have.

  Julienne and Nils, for instance, were passionately in love both before and after marriage. She told me that they once made love on the sofa in the office of the math chairman, who had left the campus and his graduate students to partic­ipate in deer-hunting season. However, I now get hints from her that things aren't as rosy as they once were. I've won­dered whether their problem, if there is one, might not be professional jealousy. Julienne is now a full professor with many papers in prestigious journals. She's been an invited speaker at important professional meetings, chair of ses­sions, editor of journals, recipient of government research grants, and mentor to graduate students. Moreover, Julienne served as chair of her department (an honor about which she complained constantly during the five years of her tenure) and was even proposed as dean of the college, an appoint­ment she firmly declined.

  Nils, although he's had a perfectly respectable academic career, is still an associate professor and not nearly as well known in his own field, mathematics, as she is in hers. And Nils tends to be depressed because everybody says mathe­maticians do their most brilliant work in their twenties, which he is, of course, long past.

  Then, I'm somewhat uneasy because the other three women all obtained graduate degrees and made their mark in their chosen fields, while I've drifted through motherhood and helpmate-hood, coming only now in my forties to start a career outside the home. It's entirely possible that I'll be viewed with some disdain by my female friends, while, ironically, the males will probably envy Jason his full-time wife.

  Oh well, such are the ironies of gender competition. (I have at last given in to the use of gender as the indication of a person's sex rather than a grammatical term, sex having too many libidinous connotations these days.)

  Then there is the dinner, which I suggested and planned, having established myself as the group's culinary expert. Everyone is coming a day early to attend and will, if I re­member them at all, have no hesitation in telling me if they don't find the meal worth their time and trouble. That's not to say that they are rude, just outspoken. But even in the .natter of the dinner, I had to work with the restaurant that Julienne insisted on. She pointed out that she has often been in New Orleans, having, in fact, moved from Louisiana to Michigan as a child, and knows where to order the best gumbo, her favorite dish.

  I like gumbo myself but rather resent having to organize a whole meal around some stranger chef's expertise in mak­ing roux, a talent that I personally never mastered, even in the days when I wasn't addicted to other people's cooking. I've always hated the idea of spending long periods of time stirring flour over a fire in the faint hope that it won't burn.

  The owner and chef, Etienne something or other—his last name is French and completely unpronounceable—has been rather cavalier and even impatient about my desire to choose the menu, which he would much rather have chosen himself, quite possibly from the leftovers of the previous night's offerings. However, when he learned that I am a food writer, he became extremely charming and loquacious, at my expense. I was tempted to insist that he call me back so the long-distance charges would be billed to him. It cost me $21.25 to plan the following menu, which I hope, and Eti­enne assures me, is the epitome of New Orleans cuisine.

  We are to start with deviled alligator puffs and drinks. The deviled alligator will be followed by gumbo, then avo­cado stuffed with shrimp remoulade, crawfish Etienne as the main course, and finally bread pudding, which I detest but was bullied into by Julienne, the chef, and even my husband Jason. Appropriate wines and brandies are to accompany each course.

  Thank God, Jason and I don't have to foot the bill for this dinner. The cost is to be divided evenly among the couples, as long as I keep it below $60 a person, bargained up from $35 in an E-mail negotiation with Broder McAvee, who teaches Calvinist theology at a small but highly regarded liberal arts college on the West Coast. His wife Carlene is a microbiologist and department head in a bioengineering company and has been invited to the meeting to give a ple­nary address on computational something or other. I'm sure she makes lots of money, but Broder doesn't and says Car­lene might be able to afford $200 dinners, but he personally thinks $50 is outrageous; he can eat all week for $50. Well, maybe he can, but it makes one wonder what he eats and whether he makes Carlene eat the same things, and espe­cially what they served their four children when the children were at home.

  Incidentally, the alligator puffs, which I chose as a con­versation piece and to satisfy my own curiosity, have gener­ated a veritable blizzard of humorous E-mail notes among the group. Everyone is now calling our reunion "the alliga­tor dinner."

  2

  Deviled Alligator Puffs

  Whatever man's original motivation for eating a creature as ugly as an alligator (perhaps it was an eat-or-be-eaten situation), I can certainly recommend deviled alligator puffs. Alligator meat may well have a nasty reptilian tang; if so, it's completely disguised by the herbs, spices, breading, and frying that go into making the puffs, which are light, crispy, and very flavorful (in a non-frightening way). The alligator meat is also low in calo­ries and cholesterol, although the breading and frying undoubtedly negate any health benefits.

  Not the least of an alligator puff's charms is that it breaks the conversational ice at a cocktail party or be­fore a dinner when the guests haven't yet imbibed enough alcohol to be easy with one another.

  However, I am not including a recipe for alligator puffs because it is unlikely that the reader will be able to find alligator meat, ground or otherwise, in the local su­permarket. I certainly couldn't, but at that time I fool­ishly imagined alligators being captured in the swamps by daring hunters called "allig
ator wrestlers."

  Silly me. Alligators have apparently been domesti­cated. There are over one hundred alligator farms in the state of Louisiana, so I can only surmise that the deli­cacy is consumed in cities more sophisticated than my own. In fact, I am told that in New Orleans the much fa­vored turtle soup is often made with alligator meat. However, I have never seen turtle soup on a menu in El Paso.

  Carolyn Blue, Eating Out in the Big Easy

  Our reserved private dining room at Etienne's was gold and cream with French doors opening onto a patio we couldn't use because rain was falling steadily on the lush shrubbery, the flagstones, and the ornate, white-painted, wrought-iron furniture. Jason and I arrived early to monitor the preparations, but we were joined before eight by Lester and Miranda Abbott.

  I remember Lester as a husky young graduate student; now he is the fat dean of a college of science with, to hear him tell it, a very active research group. He wore a brown, double-breasted suit that didn't particularly flatter him.

  Ever so slight a smile touched my husband's mouth as Lester bragged about his fourteen graduate students and three postdoctoral fellows and the twenty-six papers his re­search group had placed during the last year in the very best journals. That little twinkle in Jason's eye was a reminder that Lester Abbott is garnering a reputation as the king of ir-reproducible results, in all probability, according to Jason, because Lester doesn't monitor the research in his labs closely enough; he's too busy wheeling and dealing at the administrative level.

  Jason harbors a mild prejudice against interfering admin­istrators, not to mention the fact that his own research group has published more papers than Lester's, and Jason has aged much more gracefully. My husband is a runner, swimmer, and racquetball player. He is still slender, his hair still dark and thick, with just a touch of distinguished gray at the tem­ples and in his neatly clipped beard. Poor Lester, although he and Jason are both forty-seven, has become rather pompous and self-congratulatory and isn't at all attractive anymore. It's hard to believe that we once called him Les and considered him one of the jolliest persons in the group, especially when he'd been drinking, and he did a lot of that in the old days.