The chocolate and echinacea tea tasted exactly like it smelled. I couldn’t pinpoint what the flavor was, and while I wouldn’t say it was something I would want to drink again, there was something slightly comforting about it. The chocolate slushy, on the other hand, was delicious. The chocolatier had blended dark and milk chocolate, heavy cream, and ice, which was blended together until it had a thick consistency. It was sweet and almost like a milkshake but with little pops of ice. I could imagine drinking many a chocolate slushy on a hot summer’s day.
As I wound my way back to Torte’s booth I stopped at Bethany’s display. She was finishing explaining her brownie delivery process to an attendee as I walked up.
“Oh hi, Jules. How’s it going? I can’t believe how packed it’s been all day.” Her apron was spattered with chocolate and her hair was disheveled.
“It looks like you’ve been busy.”
She blushed and stared down at her messy apron and equally messy workstation. Granted, she was working the fest solo, but cleanliness is imperative when working in a kitchen or serving the public. Yet again it made me wonder about her training and practices. “I know. I can’t seem to keep up with the demand. I’ve been frosting brownies as I go. I guess I should have baked a lot more.”
I pointed to a caramel and walnut brownie. “May I?”
“Oh yes, please. I’d love it if you tasted it, and please give me your honest opinion. I can take it. Everyone says that the way you improve as a chef is through criticism, so lay it on me.”
“I prefer constructive feedback,” I said, tearing a bite of the brownie. “Can I offer a piece of advice?”
She nodded.
“Don’t let chefs be cruel or condescending to you. Trust your food. Of course, it’s important to be willing to hear feedback that will make you a stronger baker, but not when it tears you down.” Her brownie was moist and chewy. The salt from the caramel and walnuts paired nicely with the dense cocoa flavor.
Her eyes drifted over to Evan’s booth. “Are you talking about Evan?”
“Trust me, I’ve worked with dozens of chefs like Evan. You can’t let someone else’s ego get into your head.” I took another bite of brownie. “This is great. I like the combination of the salt with the sweet. Really well done.”
She blushed. “Thank you.”
“I mean it. Your brownies are fantastic.” I’d met a number of aspiring chefs like Bethany in culinary school and during my time on the ship. Head chefs can smell fear miles away. It’s a delicate balance when starting out in a career in the world of food. Chefs-in-training have to be respectful and willing to listen to the head chef’s advice—or rant, depending on the chef—but they also have to have an innate level of self-respect and trust in their skill. I don’t know if I developed my self-assurance from growing up in Torte’s warm and welcoming kitchen or from Mom and Dad’s gentle guidance. It was probably a combination of both, but either way I learned early on in my training that in order to make it in the culinary world you have to be willing to take charge and own up to your successes and failures. Chefs respect a can-do attitude.
My pep talk to Bethany appeared to be working. A smile spread across her pimpled face. The pockmarks dotting her cheeks were yet another reminder of how young she was.
“Evan was pretty mean about my brownies,” she said, looking at her feet. “It makes me feel better that you think they’re moist and chewy. Don’t get me wrong, I know that I’m just a food blogger, but I have over ten thousand followers on Instagram and a lot of customers around town, and I’ve never had anyone other than Evan tell me that my brownies were stale and dry.”
“That’s exactly my point. Chefs like Evan will pounce on your weakness to get under your skin. You’re going to have to toughen up a little and let those kinds of comments roll off.”
Evan had obviously embarrassed her and shaken her confidence, but I still couldn’t picture her intentionally trying to kill him. I studied her brownie display. She was offering samples of eight different brownies—a black and tan, blondies with peanuts and white chocolate chips, chocolate raspberry, chocolate mint, apricot and milk chocolate, a double chocolate, cherry cheesecake, and the caramel and walnut that I had tasted. Eight varieties would be a major undertaking for a professional chef, let alone a food blogger baking out of her home kitchen. Looking at her tasting table made me even more convinced that it must have been one of Bethany’s brownies that killed Evan. How could she have kept track of so many flavors in a nonprofessional kitchen?
I chose my words carefully. “You have amassed quite the assortment of combinations here. How do you manage working out of your house?”
Bethany’s eyes lit up. “Oh, that’s easy. I have a system down.” She pointed to the ivory place cards with the name of each brownie written in a cursive scroll. “I start with the batter. I only had to make three kinds of batter—dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and the brown sugar batter for the blondies and black and tans. My friend Carter came over to help me bake. We had an assembly line in my kitchen, and as soon as each pan was layered with the batter we would add each new flavor. Believe it or not it only took a day to bake all of these.”
She beamed with pride while I tried to wrap my brain around what she’d just said. Carter? As in Evan’s assistant and right-hand man?
I couldn’t help but voice my bafflement. There was no way that Evan would have allowed Carter to work for a competing chef, regardless of how little he thought of Bethany. “Carter? You mean Evan’s assistant?”
Bethany threw her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I let that slip. I promised Carter that I wouldn’t say anything.”
“What do you mean?” I leaned closer to her as I spoke. “Carter was working with you?”
She rubbed her temples and sighed. “I don’t know how I said that. Carter and I made a pact not to say a word to anyone. Evan would have killed him if he knew that Carter was helping me.”
I thought she might cry for a minute. Walking around the front of her single table, I put my arm on her clammy hand and reassured her. “I won’t say a word, I promise. Your secret is safe with me, but I’m surprised. Are you sure that Evan didn’t know?”
Bethany gave me a pained smile and shook her head. The sound of a group of chocolate lovers approaching made her hesitate. I thought I’d lost my chance to get her to open up, but fortunately, at the last minute they stopped two booths away to sample drinking chocolate.
“I’m sorry to put you in the middle of this, but I do feel like I can trust you. You’re so mature and calm.”
“It’s okay. I was your age not long ago, and like I said, whatever you tell me won’t go any further.” I didn’t mention that if she revealed anything that might have contributed to Evan’s death, I would have to strongly encourage her to go to the police.
She sighed again. “I’m worried that Evan found out that Carter was helping me. It was innocent. He and I are friends. We went to school together and when he heard that I’d gotten a slot here at the festival he offered to help me—on his own time. He would never do anything to jeopardize his job. He only helped me on his time off.”
“I don’t think it’s a crime to help a friend on his own time. That’s standard practice in this industry. I’ve jumped in and fulfilled orders and helped my friends more times than I can count, and they’ve done the same for me.”
Bethany shook her head. Her eyes widened. “No, that’s the thing. Evan made Carter sign a noncompete contract. Carter was legally bound not to help me.”
She appeared even younger as she spoke. I thought back to my early twenties before I’d learned business lingo. A noncompete might have terrified me as well. “I don’t think helping you with brownies for the Chocolate Fest would be a violation of the contract. Chefs put those in place so that their best talent doesn’t get poached by the competition.”
“Are you sure?”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Evan wouldn’t have even considered her in the same realm as his competitors. He wouldn’t have considered Torte one, either, for that matter. “I think you can take that off your list of things to worry about.”
She looked relieved. “Oh, good. I was worried that I got him fired or something. I saw them yesterday and Evan was livid.”
“Here?”
“No. Before the festival.” She tapped her fingertips on the table. “I do deliveries to businesses around town, and yesterday I had an order for a staff meeting at the hospital. I saw Evan and Carter there. They didn’t see me, but it was impossible to miss them. They were standing by the outpatient clinic fighting.”
“What were they fighting about?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear and I didn’t want to take a chance of them spotting me, especially because I thought they might be fighting about me. What if Evan found out that Carter helped me?”
“Are you sure they were fighting? Evan had a tendency to be brash with everyone. Maybe you misinterpreted what you saw.”
“No. They were definitely fighting. Well, at least Evan was. He was shouting at Carter. Carter looked like he was trying to calm Evan down, but Evan said something and stormed away.”
“And you haven’t talked to Carter about it?”
“I haven’t had a chance. Everything happened so fast when Evan collapsed yesterday.”
The group of tasters approached the table. “Brownies!” one of them squealed.
I patted Bethany’s shoulder. “You have fans. Don’t worry. I’m sure it will all work out.”
As I walked back to Torte’s booth, I glanced at the Confections Couture showcase where Carter stood behind the elegant chocolate display talking with customers. Bethany’s slip had shifted my thinking. Could Carter have done something to harm his boss?