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Chapter One
"... Big Nate's. Now that's the kind of barbecue that ..."
"... terrible Wharf places. The ahi was so overcooked that ..."
"... potato skins stuffed with goat cheese at the Potrero Brewing Company ..."
Good grief, Anneke Haagen thought crossly. Did everyone in San Francisco talk about food all the time? She craned her neck to see around George McMartin, whose head was squarely between her and the fifty-four-inch TV screen. If they weren't interested in the football game, why did they bother coming to a sports bar in the first place?
"... is good, but Amici's has the right kind of thin, crisp crust. And they have pine nuts," Jeremy Blake said. On the screen, Anneke saw Wade Furlong, Michigan's freshman quarterback, take a quick three-step drop and fire the ball toward the end zone.
"... Mandalay. They do the best tampoi rice I've ever tasted," Blair Falcone said. Furlong's pass sailed over the receiver's head and bounced out of bounds. "Do you like Burmese food?" he asked Anneke.
"I didn't even know there was such a thing," she confessed. Michigan lined up on the Penn State 12-yard line, fourth and goal.
"What about P.J.'s Oysterbed?" Mimi Rojas asked Blair. Furlong took the snap from center. "Really good seafood, and they even do an authentic ceviche." She turned to Anneke. "There's a lot of good seafood in the city as long as you stay away from the Fisherman's Wharf tourist traps."
"Don't get sucked in by the hews, either," Noelle Greene warned. "If you want a place with a great view and good food ..." She stopped as the noise level in the dining room rose. All eyes turned to the TV screen, where Wade Furlong was scrambling out of the pocket. The shouting rose to a crescendo and then died into a chorus of groans as Furlong's desperate pass was picked off by a Penn State safety.
"... or Louie's," George McMartin pronounced. "Simple, first-rate American food. Great brunches, and on a clear day you can see all the way to the Farallones. I've even seen whales from their window."
She was going to murder Richard Killian, she decided. Preferably slowly, and preferably with something food-related. Something nasty-tasting.
It had sounded like fun when Richard called them at the Ritz-Carlton. Come watch the Michigan game Saturday at the Maize and Blue, he'd said over the phone. Brunch is on the house--a wedding present, he'd said. Lots of other Michigan alumni to watch the game with, he'd said. And you can spend the entire game answering silly, intrusive, highly personal questions about your eating habits--he hadn't said.
Definitely a slow-acting poison. Anneke nibbled a croissant thoughtfully. She wanted to watch him die.
* * *
"Would you say this is more than you normally eat for breakfast?" Lindsay Summers wrenched the conversation back to the immediate meal. Lindsay Summers had long, pale blond hair and a tiny, sinewy body and tiny, delicate hands. She wore pencil-thin khaki pants, and a clingy beige tank top over a clingy short-sleeved white tee. She sipped--delicately--from a glass of water that looked almost too heavy for her fine-boned wrist.
The question was addressed to the table at large, but her blue eyes fixed on Anneke.
"Good Lord, yes." Anneke wondered why she felt apologetic.
"It's not breakfast, it's brunch," George McMartin corrected Lindsay. "I'd say I ate about what I normally would for breakfast and lunch combined."
"Frankly, I never really thought about it." Blair Falcone, looking out of place in a beautifully cut Armani suit, responded shortly to Lindsay's look of interrogation. He sounded even more annoyed than Anneke felt. His glance flicked to Lindsay and then back to the television screen. "I'm not in the habit of analyzing what I eat."
"I see." Lindsay's large blue eyes regarded him thoughtfully.
"No, of course he doesn't." Elisa Falcone, beautifully if dressily clothed in a heavy white silk shirt, hand-painted silk quilted vest, and black wool pants, uttered a dramatic sigh. She waved a hand heavy with gold bracelets and rings. "He'd absolutely live on pasta if I let him," she told the table at large. "Do you know, he once ordered spaghetti and meatballs at Venticello's?" She smiled and rolled her mascaraed brown eyes, inviting the others to share her amusement at her husbands's peccadilloes.
First there'd been the questionnaire, which took up most of the first quarter of the game. ("How many meals do you eat in restaurants during an average week?" "Exactly what did you eat the last time yon had dinner in a restaurant?" "Do you normally try to limit your intake of saturated fats?" "How many times in the last year did you eat a meal while watching a football game at a sports bar?")
Then there was the brunch buffet. Anneke, who was used to watching football at a decent afternoon hour, found it disconcerting to be faced with a kickoff at nine A.M. West Coast time, but she couldn't fault the food. There were scrambled eggs mixed with crumbled sausage, slivers of leek, and sprinkles of caraway seeds; there were miniature croissants with cream cheese fillings flavored variously with herbs, asparagus, and brandied cherries; there were cups of tiny melon balls and strawberries in a sour cream-cardamom dressing; and finally, there was a gourmet doughnut bar--crisp little balls and twists with drizzled caramel or orange glaze or cinnamon-sugar coating that had her altering her attitude toward doughnuts. Of course she'd eaten more than she usually did; she could feel the waistband of her jeans digging into her stomach.
Even more irritating--Karl had been excused, on the grounds of being an ex-athlete, and therefore ... what? Too nutrition-conscious? Anneke had no idea; she only knew that this was one hell of a way to run a honeymoon. She looked longingly across the room, where her new husband was deep in conversation--football-related conversation, she assumed jealously--with a tall, gray-haired African American man who looked like, and might well be, a former basketball player.
And of course there was the endless talk about food--restaurants, chefs, menus, diets, past meals, future meals. And all the while, there was Lindsay Summers, watching and listening and scribbling constantly in her notebook.
"The sausages are his own recipe, aren't they?" Blair Falcone, ignoring both his wife and Lindsay Summers, spoke across the table to Noelle Greene. Noelle was a large woman with a beautiful face and a mass of improbably colored hair shading from deep auburn to maroon.
"Yes. He has them made at a place up in Napa," Noelle replied. "But I think Cody's real signature dish is going to be the Cotswold Fusilli--makes you rethink everything you ever believed about macaroni and cheese." Noelle wore a tight, low-cut crimson tee under a crisp white cotton shirt unbuttoned and tied at the waist; when she leaned forward, the white shirt gaped open and her impressive breasts strained against the fabric of the T-shirt.
"Macaroni and cheese?" Elisa Falcone tilted her sleek dark head, gold earrings gleaming. "Oh, I don't think so, dear. I mean, simplicity is all very well, but what puts Cody in such a special category is his ability to blend complex flavors into entirely new combinations."
"Some of his Michigan cherry recipes are going to become standards," George McMartin said. "Five years from now you'll be telling people you were eating Cody Jarrett's food before he was famous." George, stocky and middle-aged with a closely cropped salt-and-pepper beard, wore a pristine white V-neck sweater over a navy blue silk turtleneck with a small block-M pin at the neck. He looked like a banker; what he was, was a restaurant critic and food writer so famous even Anneke had heard of him. "In fact," he went on, "I've nominated Cody for Rising Star Chef in this year's culinary competition. Believe me, Nouvelle Midwest is going to be the hottest food trend in the country."
"Really?" Blair appeared deeply satisfied.
"Dear, I told you that last week." Elisa shook her head with an air of patience. "Oh, look, Christa Collier finally got here." She waved across the room, bracelets clinking.
"Do you often eat more than you should at the Maize and Blue?" Lindsay Summers's voice was snappish; she was having trouble controlling the conversation, and she didn't like it. Anneke noted that "more than you usually eat for breakfast" had now become "more than you should." Not only was Lindsay Summers annoying, she was a lousy researcher.
"I didn't eat `more than I should.' I ate the wrong things, that's all." Mimi Rojas, plump and darkly pretty in a navy blue shirt, heavy silver earrings, and round wire-rimmed glasses, sounded defensive. Lindsay Summers had the ability to make everyone feel defensive. "I wanted to taste Cody's food, that's all, and the buffet gave me a chance to sample a lot of different things. I'll go back to my normal diet tomorrow."
"I see." Lindsay made a note, then put down her pen as a waiter appeared and set down a plate containing two thick slabs of sourdough toast in front of her. Lindsay nodded to him and shoved the glass to one side.
"Normal?" Jeremy Blake glared at Mimi. "How can you call a diet of pure fat normal?" Jeremy was probably in his early thirties, although the buzz-cut hair and gold hoop earring made him appear younger. He propped his elbows on the table, displaying the kind of defined musculature that Anneke seemed to recall was referred to as "ripped." Jeremy wore a chest-hugging navy blue tee that said BLAKE'S FITNESS--FOR LIFE. It looked as if it had been painted on; his bulbous chest muscles--"pecs"?--expanded and contracted as he spoke. Anneke, half-fascinated, half-repelled, could hardly tear her eyes away from them.
"Lay off, Jeremy." Mimi returned his glare. "You don't tell me how to eat, and I don't tell you how to dress, remember?"
"This is advertising, not fashion." Jeremy waved a hand at his T-shirt. "Besides, clothes won't clog your arteries."
"Neither will the Cornwell Diet, if you do it right," Mimi snapped. Anneke thought their exchange sounded almost perfunctory, as though they'd been having the same argument for a long time.
"So you think you'd have eaten less if you'd ordered from a menu instead of going to a buffet?" Lindsay spoke loudly to Mimi.
"I don't know. Maybe." Mimi shrugged. "It's not a big deal."
"Actually, I think it's the sitting around for so long that's the real problem." Jeremy reached into his pocket and withdrew a small cellophane bag containing half a dozen assorted pills, which he proceeded to pop into his mouth one by one as he spoke, interspersed with little sips of orange juice. "You sit around, and you nibble, you watch some of the game and you nibble some more, y'know?" He tossed the now-empty bag on the table, where Anneke could make out the words BLAKE'S ENERGY MIXTURE. "I mean, it's okay for special occasions, as long as you take the right supplements. You can't get all the nutrients you need from food anyway."
"Maybe not," Mimi said waspishly, "but you can screw up your body just as much with weird New-Age concoctions as you can with a high-protein diet."
"There's nothing weird about Blake's Energy Mixture," Jeremy retorted.
"So you consider watching football a special occasion?" Lindsay asked Jeremy. "Is that why you gave yourself permission to eat more than you should have?"
"I guess." Of them all, Jeremy seemed the least annoyed by Lindsay's questions. "I mean, I know eggs and croissants are high-fat, but at least Cody's doing low-fat sausage. And he's cutting the fat content in a lot of his other dishes, too. That's one of the things--"
"As long as it doesn't affect the taste," George McMartin interrupted. "I mean, it's one thing to focus on foods that are naturally low-fat, but trying to force a naturally rich food into low-fat mode is just a recipe for disaster." He held up a tiny croissant. "This is delicious, but just imagine what it would taste like if it was filled with that slimy fat-free cream cheese."
"So you eat things here that you know are bad for you just because they taste good?" Lindsay turned her attention to George.
"I didn't say that at all." He glared at her. "I merely refuse to eat things that taste like horse droppings simply because some self-styled expert has declared it the health miracle du jour ."
A roar filled the room, and Anneke spun around to the television screen in time to see a Michigan player, knees pumping, break out of the pack and charge downfield. He did a juke step around an oncoming linebacker; cut toward the sideline; did a pinpoint swivel to avoid the desperate grab of the Penn State cornerback; and he was in the clear at last, rocketing the last fifteen yards and into the end zone with the ball held triumphantly aloft just as the game clock ticked down to the end of the first half.
"Did you see the move Truesdale put on that linebacker?" Jeremy Blake shouted over the uproar. He was on his feet; so were most of the other people in the room.
"My God, is he fast, or is he fast?" Noelle crowed.
"I think they clocked him at four-three-something for the forty," Anneke said, searching the room for Karl. She spotted him finally and gave him an excited thumbs-up before sitting back down in her chair.
"Now, darlin', come on." Richard Killian was hovering behind Lindsay, apparently oblivious to the excitement in Ann Arbor. His customary charm was cranked up to Overkill, but it seemed to be having no effect whatsoever on Lindsay, and Richard was beginning to sound nervous--which he damn well should be, Anneke reasoned, since she was going to murder him before the morning was over.
"I assume you're aware of the connection between saturated fats and heart disease." Lindsay spoke over her shoulder, without bothering to face him. If she'd even noticed the touchdown she gave no sign of it. "Not to mention the surgeon general's declaration of obesity as a public health crisis. And the Maize and Blue menu is absolutely loaded with high-fat foods."
"Well, yes, but ..." Richard dithered, casting an anxious glance at the young woman on Lindsay's right. Like Lindsay, she had a notebook in front of her, but there the similarity ended. Barbara ... Williams, wasn't it? ... was the kind of woman people forgot about. Medium height, pudgy body, medium brown hair, round, colorless face devoid of makeup; everything about her seemed to fade into the background. Only, on this occasion, her notebook gave her presence--Barbara Williams was writing an article about Lindsay's research for the food section of the local newspaper. No wonder Richard was worried. It occurred to Anneke that he might have usefully applied some of his charm in her direction, but then, Richard never even noticed women who looked like Barbara Williams.
"So the purpose of your research is to prove that food shouldn't taste good?" Noelle Greene looked at Lindsay innocently.
"The purpose of my research is to determine the triggers that cause people to eat badly." Lindsay glanced at Noelle and looked away, as though Noelle's size was a personal offense.
"Yes, but didn't you just suggest that taste was one of those triggers?" Noelle grinned, dearly enjoying herself.
"We don't know what the triggers are," Lindsay replied severely. "I don't argue ahead of my data." Like hell you don't, Anneke snorted to herself.
"There's nothing unhealthy about Cody's Nouvelle Midwest cuisine," Richard protested. He flicked another glance at Barbara Williams, writing something in her notebook. Lindsay ignored him.
"Nouvelle Midwest?" The phrase, repeated for the second time, dragged Anneke's attention away from the TV screen, where other Big Ten scores were being shown.
"Think gourmet comfort food." It was George McMartin who replied. "Sausages and scrambled eggs, just like Mom used to make. Only instead of greasy kielbasa, you get delicate caraway-seasoned sausage, and instead of fried onions, you get the lighter flavor of leeks." He bit a miniature doughnut in half, chewed, swallowed, then examined the remaining half of the pastry carefully. "Of course, if you're only going to be in town for a week or so, you'll want to sample a number of different cuisines. The tapas at Mustafa's are worth a trip to San Francisco all by themselves."
"Oh, tapas." Noelle Greene fluttered impossibly long eyelashes, dismissing tapas. "For a honeymoon? Dessert at Schilling's. Not only do they do the most absolutely gorgeous constructions, but it is only the best chocolate in the whole city." She kissed the crimson-enameled tips of her fingers and waggled them at Anneke. "I promise you, it's better than sex."
Noelle's laughter was infectious. Anneke held out both hands, palms down. "Hmm." She turned over her left hand. "Chocolate." She turned over the right hand. "Sex." She spread both hands and shook her head. "Sorry, not a choice I want to make. Guess I'll hold out for both."
"Hey, whatever works." Noelle laughed again. "In fact ... George, what's the name of that erotic bakery?"
"The one that does the penis-shaped cakes?" George put a hand to his beard and shook his head. "Utterly tasteless. You're better off putting first-rate chocolate on the real thing. In fact, if you want some very fine erotic chocolate, Callista Chocolate makes a fudge sauce that's absolute nirvana--dark and bitter with the perfect level of sweetness. And it's the right consistency, too--spreads evenly, but it's thick enough so it doesn't drip off onto the sheets."
Good Lord, he seemed to be serious. Anneke blinked. Was he serious? And what was the name of that chocolate sauce again? Maybe all this talk about food wasn't completely useless after all.
Chapter Two
Food and sex. It was all about appetites, wasn't it? And if people couldn't control their appetites, they were no better than animals. Lindsay Summers's glance fell on Noelle Greene and she quickly averted her eyes. She couldn't stand to look at the woman. The thick arms, the broad hips, those breasts ... She could at least have the decency to cover herself up, instead of flaunting that obscene body. As if she were proud of her own lack of self-control. And there was Blair Falcone leaning toward her, smiling, just as if he didn't find her repulsive. Ridiculous--no man could be attracted to that mountain of flesh.
You'd think that educating them would work, but it didn't. Just look at the people here if you doubted it. It was exactly the kind of group she'd wanted, exactly what she needed to prove her hypothesis. All of them well-educated, all of them upper-middle-class, and still they stuffed themselves with food they knew would kill them. All of them had food issues they refused to confront.
A waiter arrived finally, and Lindsay accepted her measured six ounces of tomato juice. You wouldn't think a restaurant--even one as sickly unhealthy as the Maize and Blue--would have so much trouble providing a simple glass of unsalted tomato juice. She checked her list of questions. She needed to record their attitudes toward healthy versus unhealthy food. She wanted good, strong anecdotal evidence that they knew how toxic the Maize and Blue was, yet continued to stuff themselves with its poisons. Richard Killian was no better than a drug pusher, yet nobody even tried to stop him. She reached for her tomato juice and took a sip. It tasted bitter, she thought; it was unsalted, wasn't it? Grimacing, she drank the glass off in three long swallows.
"How would you rate the health quality of the food here?" she asked, knowing what their answers would be.
"Probably pretty poor." Jeremy Blake's cheerful disregard grated on her nerves. You'd think someone who ran a chain of so-called "health clubs" would be more concerned with his own health. But even Jeremy could never control his appetites; worse, he didn't even seem to care. He really believed that if you pumped iron and popped enough of his ridiculous pills, you could eat anything you wanted. He even believed that all that inflated musculature--steroid-induced, she'd bet--was healthier than the correct thinness.
"Nonsense," George McMartin said. "It's perfectly fine as long as you don't overeat." Lindsay shuddered as he patted his disgusting paunch. George McMartin would be as much The Enemy as Richard Killian; Lindsay's research would be a threat to his whole way of life, even his career. Because her results would drive the campaign for legislation to control American eating habits.
That was the whole point of her research. Just as there were laws to control drugs, and alcohol, and smoking, there had to be laws to control food. You couldn't actually ban unhealthy foods, unfortunately, at least not right away. But you could at least control them, the same way you controlled other self-destructive behaviors. You could use taxes, and child protection laws, and restaurant regulations. You could legislate restrictions, and encourage the use of harassment and shame tactics, and ...
"Ah, Miss Summers, you're being too hard on people." Richard Killian really thought that charm would work on her, Lindsay thought contemptuously. "You don't really want to ..." Whatever else he was about to say was lost in the raucous uproar from the rest of the dining room.
"Oh, good, they're going to show a replay of Truesdale's run." Anneke Haagen spun around toward the big TV screen and leaned forward expectantly. Funny, Lindsay thought, she doesn't look like a football fanatic. She tried to focus on the screen, where gigantic mesomorphs pummeled each other; oversized, overfed, utterly repulsive. And here was a room full of presumably intelligent people watching other people exercise instead of exercising themselves. Exercise, too, would figure in the new legislation. She and Griff would ...
... What had she been thinking about? She felt a sharp pain in her stomach, and a sudden vertigo. She gripped the edge of the table, gritting her teeth against the wave of nausea that threatened to overcome her.
"Wow. Did you see Jackson throw that block?" Anneke pumped her fist in the air, grinning widely.
Lindsay felt her stomach heave; she tried to say something, but discovered she couldn't talk....
Chapter Three
There were doctors in the house, of course--three of them, in fact--but none of them could do anything except pronounce Lindsay Summers dead. The paramedics, arriving in a blaze of sirens, concurred. Anneke, along with the others who'd been at her table, stood with her back to the wall, trying to keep out of the way. All of them appeared shocked and horrified; all of them seemed even more shocked when a contingent of police arrived to take control of the restaurant.
Anneke was less shocked by their arrival. She'd seen Karl swiftly cross the room to stand next to the table while medical personnel did their futile best, preventing anyone from touching anything but Lindsay herself. And she'd seen him make a call on his cell phone. Now, as uniforms and plainclothes personnel fanned out across the room, she moved over to stand next to him.
"You the one who made the call?" The man who approached was in his thirties, with a face of sharp planes and angles, alert and intense. He spoke quickly and jerkily, his brown eyes darting from point to point. He wore a black jacket over a dark red silk skirt buttoned but tieless, a black brush cut, and diamond stud in one ear.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from BETTER THAN SEX by Susan Holtzer. Copyright © 2001 by Susan Holtzer. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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