The Proof is in the Pudding

“Next is lovely Della Carmichael, hostess of In the Kitchen with Della on the Better Living Channel. Show us where you are, Della.”

The spotlight found me. I gave a quick little wave with my free hand. While I was at ease teaching food preparation on television-I’d been a high school English teacher for twelve years before I started the cooking school-I was a little embarrassed to be introduced at an event full of famous people when I wasn’t on the premises to cook. I was much more comfortable with a spatula in my hand than a clipboard.

“Now for a shot of testosterone, a man whose nationally syndicated food column influences what people eat from coast to coast. Here he is, the sworn enemy of fast food: Keith Ingram.”

There was brief, polite applause for the judges. Seeming to relish the spotlight, Ingram waved with both hands thrust high. It was a gesture too large for the less-than-wild enthusiasm the gala attendees felt for the judges. We were not the luminaries that people in the ballroom had paid five hundred dollars apiece to watch.

From what I could see, it didn’t seem as though John had done permanent damage to Ingram’s face. I admit to being torn about that. On the one hand, I didn’t like violence, but when it came to Keith Ingram and what he was threatening to do to Eileen, I would not have trusted myself if I had found him alone on a country road and I knew how to drive a backhoe.

“And now,” Long said, “it’s my pleasure to introduce the love of my life. I wake up every morning a happy man, just because I know she’s going to do something that day to make me crazy-or make me smile. She’s going to make one of you smile, too, because she’s in charge of the one-hundred-thousand-dollar check that’s going to be awarded tonight.” He made a sweeping gesture toward the side of the stage. “My daughter, Tina. Come on out here, baby doll.”

From behind the length of velvet curtain that framed the stage stepped Tina Long, carrying a two-feet-high-by- four-feet-long cardboard check. All that was visible of her behind the cardboard were the blandly pretty face above it that had graced so many tabloid gossip magazine covers in the past year, and two pipe-cleaner thin legs below. The hands that gripped the mock-up were pale and slender, their fingers bright with pink nail polish onto which pink glitter had been sprinkled.

Long enthusiastically led the applause for Tina as she took a bow.

When the clapping died down, Long said, “As you can see, the check has been partly made out. There’s the bank, the date, and the amount: one hundred thousand dollars. All that has to be filled in is the name of the charity selected by the winning celebrity, and my signature. Then, thanks to one of the stars here, some good cause is going to get a fabulous surprise tonight.”

Keith Ingram had moved next to me. “And what do we judges get? Nothing but indigestion from a bellyful of amateur cooking.”

Turning away because I couldn’t stand to look at him, I glanced across the ballroom to where Eileen was standing with her mother.

She was staring at Keith Ingram with a degree of hatred that I wouldn’t have thought possible in this gentle girl who had lived with me for most of her life.

9

We were one hour into the ninety-minute cooking competition. Up to this point, according to the instructions we’d received in the hotel manager’s office, we three judges had been free to move about as we liked, watching the progress being made at the twenty separate stoves in whatever order we wished.

The ballroom had been divided into five sections, with the stoves placed in groupings of four per sector, with the sectors numbered one through five. Paths six feet wide, marked by velvet ropes attached to brass stands, outlined the walkways through which the judges and members of the audience could stroll. The sectors were numbered to make it easier for the people attending to find their favorite celebrities. A program sheet with the locations diagrammed had been handed to each patron who entered the ballroom.

During the last half hour before time would be called and the celebrities-finished or not-had to present their dishes, all three judges were supposed to move along the quadrants of stoves together, carefully examining the dishes that were being prepared.

Sector One was at the end of the ballroom closest to the shallow stage. Sectors Two and Three formed the row on the west side of the room, with Sectors Four and Five comprising the row on the east side. If I described the layout to Nicholas on the phone later, I’d tell him to picture a torso with a head and two outstretched arms. Sector One would be the torso’s head-just below the stage-with Two and Three being the extended right arm and Four and Five being the left extended arm. Those reaching arms pointed toward the wide, double-door entrance to the ballroom. A uniformed security guard-not one of the two who had come charging in to confront John-had been posted there to make sure that anyone who tried to enter the event had a ticket to it.

Ingram, Yvette, and I had worked our way through the crowd to stand beside Sector Four, on the left side of the ballroom, halfway between the stage at one end and Sector Five. Dozens of people swarmed about, which sometimes made it difficult for us judges to keep moving. I didn’t mind, because having a lot of people around made it easier for me to avoid looking at Keith Ingram.

Wolf Wheeler, a comic movie actor in Sector One, was attracting attention to his workstation by tossing several eggs higher and higher and catching them to keep the airborne rotation going. At first his antics irritated me because I was sure he was going to drop the eggs and I hate to see food wasted, but then I realized he was a really skilled juggler performing an amazing routine. I watched him for a minute, and wished it could have been longer, but I was supposed to be concentrating on what the stars in Sector Four were creating. I pulled my attention away from him and went back to acting like a judge.

The celebrities in this quartet of stoves were three actors and an author. Francine Ames, whose dark-haired beauty had been compared to young Elizabeth Taylor’s, had starred for nineteen years as an often-married vamp on TV’s longest running daytime soap opera.

Oona Rogers and Vernon “Coupe” Deville were married-to-each-other action movie stars. As sinewy as gymnasts, approximately the same height, and with matching face-hugging caps of sleek bronze hair, they looked more like brother and sister than like a non-biological couple. According to the entertainment press, they had met a few years ago when they were cast as costars in an espionage thriller. They fell in love among the car chases and explosions. That first picture was such a box office success it had been followed by a series with the same two leading characters.

The last member of this cooking quartet was British author Roland Gray, whose international espionage thrillers had earned him the distinction of having had the most novels to reach number one on the New York Times best seller list during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Gray, whose hair was more salt than pepper, wasn’t handsome by any conventional measurement, but with his easy smile and blue eyes that fastened like lasers onto the person to whom he was speaking, he was undeniably charismatic. I had started reading his novels during the months after Mack’s death, when I was trying to adjust to sleeping alone in our bed. Classic movies on television, mystery novels, and Gray’s breathtaking plots and his fascinating secret agent hero took my mind off my pain for hours at a time. I appreciated Gray having done that for me.

Ingram, Yvette, and I surveyed the cooking activities, assessing the individual dishes and checking the skill level of the various celebrity chefs.

Vernon “Coupe” Deville was sauteing onions for his Philly Cheese Steak. He had his burners on high, with the result that the combination of butter and olive oil he was using sent little dots of hot grease into the air.

Ingram addressed Yvette. “Step back. You don’t want to get splattered.” Since I hadn’t been included in his warning, I guessed that he didn’t care if grease hit me.

Oona Rogers, Deville’s wife, wasn’t endangering anyone. Her workspace was much neater than his, and she wasn’t splashing the marinara sauce as she stirred it into her Chicken Parmesan.

Moving on, we watched Francine Ames take a partially baked strawberry-rhubarb pie from her oven and start to remove the aluminum collar she’d fastened around it to prevent the edges of the crust from becoming too brown. When a big hunk of piecrust came off with the collar of foil, her pretty face screwed up into a grimace.

“The pie will taste just as good,” she told us as she put it back into the oven for its final fifteen minutes of baking.