Deep Dish (20 page)

V
alerie was watching Tate as the judges were introduced, and as soon as Deidre Delaney stepped into camera range, his face went very, very still. Earlier in the day, he’d been unbearably cocky, but once he saw this blonde, his whole demeanor changed. Literally, the wind went out of his sails.

She had to run to catch up with him as he hastened out of the lodge and toward the ballroom.

“What’s up?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm to slow him down.

“Nothing,” he said, his face conveying just the opposite.

“I know better,” she said. “Come on, Tate. I saw your face when Barry introduced Deidre Delaney.”

He sighed. “I know her, okay? And not in a good way.”

“What kind of way do you know her? Not, for God’s sake, in the biblical sense. Right?”

He rubbed his bruised cheek with the back of his hand, smudging his carefully applied makeup.

“We met at the Miami Food and Wine Festival, last year,” he said finally, glancing over his shoulder to make sure they wouldn’t be overheard. But he needn’t have bothered, because Regina Foxton and her producer were making tracks toward the ballroom and the kitchen. For once, Little Miss Sunshine didn’t look too sunny. She looked, he decided, absolutely murderous.

Not that he was feeling all that cheery himself. Not now.

“How do you know this woman?” Val repeated.

“It was after one of those huge, bloated dinner things,” Tate said
reluctantly. “A fund-raiser for some charity I never heard of. They had celebrity chefs at all these different stations throughout this gigantic ballroom in this swanky hotel down on the beach. I was doing conch fritters, and this Delaney broad’s station was next to mine. She was doing some kooky dessert with papayas and guavas and pomegranate syrup. I struck up a polite conversation.”

“You made a pass at her!” Val said, slapping her forehead in disbelief.

“The hell I did,” Tate protested. “We chatted a little bit during the evening. She came over to watch me making the fritters. Said she was interested in my technique.”

“I’ll bet,” Val said.

“She kept touching me while she was talking to me. Man, I hate that when people can’t keep their hands to themselves.”

“Oh, me too,” Val said, rolling her eyes.

“I’m being serious,” Tate said. “Then, I’m breaking down my station, and she wanders over and asks if I want to go get a drink. But I was beat from standing on my feet for four hours frying up fritters for the beautiful people—who, incidentally, treated me like I was some kind of glorified busboy. I politely begged off, told her I was going back to my room to get a shower and hit the rack. Which is what I did. Next thing I know, I’m climbing out of the shower, there’s a knock at my hotel room door, and she’s standing there—wearing nothing but the hotel’s complimentary bathrobe—holding a bottle of Veuve Cliquot.”

“A gorgeous blonde. In a bathrobe. With a four-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne. Are you sure you’re not making this up?”

“I wish I were,” he said.

“And you did what?”

“She caught me off guard. I don’t even like champagne.”

“Don’t whine,” Val said. “It’s not attractive on you.”

“I just stood there, staring at her. Eventually, she says, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ I kinda stammered around, and I guess I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.”

“Which was?”

He winced. “‘No, thanks.’ And then I shut the door and locked it. I guess I didn’t handle it too well,” he admitted.

“Ya think?”

E
ach Food Fight kitchen was a stainless steel symphony. Side-by-side mirror images, they took up one end of the Rebeccaville plantation’s old ballroom.

Gina trailed her fingertips across the polished countertops. Large wooden cutting boards had been dropped flush with the stainless steel countertop work surfaces. Each station held a commercial-size Viking stove with six burners and a built-in grill. There were double ovens on each side, and separating the workstations was a glass-doored walk-in refrigerator. All the comforts of home—if your home happened to be a state-of-the art commercial kitchen.

Propped at eye level above each stove was a foot-high digital time clock, each set at 6:00. The red LED display light was blinking on and off.

Before Tate Moody could establish a beachhead, Gina quickly chose the station on the right-hand side of the set and began unrolling the case that held her knives.

“Good idea,” Scott said, his lips close to her ears. “Be aggressive from the get-go. Let him know you won’t be pushed around.”

“You’re sure you want to wear that color top?” Deborah asked, fussing with the strap of Gina’s tank top. “I really think red, rather than pink, is your power color.”

“I’m sure,” Gina said firmly.

On the short walk over to the ballroom, Scott and Deborah had peppered her with a barrage of suggestions and questions. Was she sure of the menu she’d dreamed up? Yes, but she might have to make substitutions on the fly. Could she gather ingredients, cook, and style
the final dishes in the allotted time period? Absolutely. What did she think Tate Moody had up his sleeve? She had absolutely no idea, but she did have a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

One thing she didn’t share with Scott was her unfortunate history with Beau Stapleton. There was no point in it, she decided. Maybe he’d forgotten all about her.

And maybe, if a frog had wings, it wouldn’t bump its butt every time it hopped around.

While the TCC crew fiddled with lights and cameras and boom mikes, D’John flitted back and forth between Gina and Tate, powdering noses, combing hair, and reapplying Tate’s smudged makeup.

“Hey, Reggie,” Tate called over, as D’John was reapplying her lip liner. “Looking pretty good over there. You want me to come over, give you some cooking tips?”

“Bite me,” she said, without moving her lips.

Neither of them dared look over at the panel of judges, who were in a small set off to the side of the kitchen, all of them seated in sleek swivel chairs behind an electric blue console with the
Food Fight!
logo emblazoned across it.

“What’s with that Beau guy?” D’John asked. “He keeps staring at us. He looks familiar, but I can’t figure out how I know him.”

“Maybe you saw him in one of his restaurants,” she suggested.

“Hmm,” D’John said.

“Is he gay?” she asked.

“He’s giving off mixed signals,” D’John said. “I can’t tell whose team he plays on. But I’ll tell you one thing—he’s definitely a player.”

“One minute,” the floor director called, sending D’John scurrying off set. “Barry, can I have you over here on the kitchen set?”

Barry Adelman strode onto the set. “C’mere, you guys,” he said.

He put one arm around Tate’s shoulder, the other around Gina’s. “Before we start shooting, I just want to say you kids look fantastic. The network is behind this in a major way. Everything is golden. Now, cook your fuckin’ brains out!”

He moved smoothly into place.

“Ready?” the director asked.

“All set,” Barry said.

“Good evening, everybody, I’m Barry Adelman, and welcome to beautiful Eutaw Island, Georgia, and The Cooking Channel’s first ever Food Fight!”

Gina blinked a little in the glare of the camera lights, and then smiled her brightest smile.

Tate glanced over at Deidre Delaney. She caught his look, winked, and licked her lips.

He looked away, groaning inwardly.

“After an extensive talent search across the entire South for the region’s best chef, TCC’s talent scouts narrowed the field to two contestants,” Barry said. “Join me now in welcoming Regina Foxton and Tate Moody!”

Barry extended both hands, and, on cue, Gina and Tate walked over from their respective stoves to join their host–slash–master of ceremonies.

“Are you ready to rumble?” Adelman asked, laughing at his own joke.

“Ready,” Gina said.

“Bring it on,” Tate agreed.

“All right then,” Adelman said. Reaching behind him, he brought out a massive iron dinner bell. “Listen carefully, as I detail the first of your three challenges. You’ll have exactly six hours from starting time, till I ring the dinner bell, which signifies time is up. During that time, you’ll be expected to gather, prepare, style, and plate a southern supper—using only the staples you’ll find in your pantries, and whatever foodstuffs you can gather right here in and around Eutaw Island. Is that understood?”

The two nodded in unison.

“For you viewers at home—Tate and Gina’s task will be especially challenging, because there are no stores and no restaurants on the island. There are also no automobiles and no paved roads. However, each of them has had an opportunity to roam the island and study its amazing bounty of natural resources. Each will have a golf cart for transportation and, on that golf cart, some very basic equipment to help them gather ingredients.”

“A cast net,” Gina prayed silently. “Please let them give me a cast net.”

She glanced over at Tate, who looked supremely, annoyingly confident.

“To your kitchens,” Barry said. A buzzer brayed from somewhere off set, and the next thing she knew, she was sprinting over to her kitchen.

She poked her head inside the glass-doored cooler and surveyed its contents. Milk, cream, eggs, butter. No cheeses, she noted, disappointed. On the wire shelving unit, she found glass jars marked
FLOUR, SUGAR, CORNMEAL, GRITS, BAKING SODA
, and
BAKING POWDER
. She found salt, pepper, paprika, red pepper, and half a dozen spices and herbs you would encounter in any halfway well-equipped home kitchen. No seafood seasoning mixes, but that was fine; she could concoct her own, as long as she had salt and red pepper. There were bottles of olive oil, vegetable oil, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and vinegar.

In baskets lined up on the countertop she was relieved to find onions, carrots, celery, and green and red peppers. Another basket held lemons and limes.

Under the counter, she found an empty basket and a small six-pack-size cooler.

She grabbed both and, making a mental list of what she’d need to gather, glanced at the clock on the counter. Five minutes gone. She glanced over at Tate’s kitchen. Empty. He had another head start on her. She ran for the door.

A
s promised, a lone golf cart was waiting right outside the door. A plastic milk crate had been bungee-corded to the back. Inside it was a long-handled dip net, a collapsible fishing rod with a child’s plastic Zebco spinning reel, a lethal-looking sheathed knife, a ball of twine, some bottled water, and a can of insect repellent. There was a brown paper sack too. Peering into it, she found a ham sandwich neatly wrapped in waxed paper, an apple, and what appeared to be a couple of homemade oatmeal cookies. Her fingers clutched a scrap of paper. “Good luck, girl!” was penciled in crabbed print. “XO Iris.”

“Thanks, Iris,” Gina said softly. “I’ve got a feeling I’m gonna need it.”

She felt a bead of sweat travel down her spine, dampening the back of her shirt as it moved toward the waist of her jeans. She swung behind the steering wheel and floored the cart’s accelerator.

As she bumped along the cart path away from Rebeccaville, she heard the thrum of cicadas in the high grass, and birds trilling from the tops of the live oaks. Not even ten o’clock, and the sun was already high overhead, promising a scorcher of a day. Gina forced herself to rethink her options. No cast net. There went her shrimp dishes. True, she had a fishing rod—of sorts. But she had nothing for bait. And no boat.

Fine, she thought, just fine. Her mama and daddy had not raised any sissies. She would find a way.

She steered the cart toward the inland side of the island, and fol
lowed the crudely painted wooden stakes that acted as the island’s road markers.

She doglegged right onto Burned Church Road, made a quick left onto the first unmarked path after that, and followed the oyster-shell path deeper into a palmetto thicket that seemed to close in on her from either side. The jagged palm fronds scratched her shoulders and arms as she lowered her head and powered on through.

Half a mile in, she glimpsed a stretch of shining water through the gnarled and twisted limbs of a wind-bent grove of oaks.

The oyster path gave out abruptly at a tall stand of sweetgrass. A fire circle—scorched earth surrounded by moss-covered chunks of broken concrete—and a pile of discarded soda and beer cans told her she’d found Runaway Creek.

The smell of the marsh—the deep gray pluff mud redolent of a place where land and sea melted into one oozing expanse of netherworld—rose up to meet her nose.

“That grass look tall, honey,” Iris had told her. “But you look around, you see a lil’ trail goin’ in there. Oyster shells, some boards, like that. My daddy drug all that out there, cuz we din’ have no bateau when I was a kid. Just you follow that, like a lil’ bridge, that’ll take you out to the creek bank.”

She could see the gleam of Iris’s gold-capped front teeth as the old lady smiled knowingly. “That there is my daddy’s honey hole. They’s a deep spot right offa there. You wade out when the tide’s out, catch you some swimps, throw a line, maybe catch you a spot-tail.”

“Spot-tail?”

Iris’s smile widened. “Redfish, girl.”

“All right, Iris,” Gina said aloud. “I’m counting on you.” She uncapped a bottle of water and took a deep swig. Her watch told her nearly an hour had passed. Her stomach told her she’d been too keyed up to eat breakfast.

She reached around and fetched the brown lunch sack Iris had packed for her, and her fingers closed over the apple.

Gina bit in, savoring the cool green sharpness of the fruit. She finished it off in scant minutes, and considered the carefully gnawed
core. Would a fish bite a bit of apple? How about a blue crab? Doubtful.

Then she remembered the ham sandwich. Her daddy had always used chicken necks or stinky fishheads for bait. This time, though, she’d have to rely on something else.

She rolled the legs of her jeans above her knees, and slathered her bare arms, chest, and legs with the insect repellent. Ruefully she looked down at her shoes—gleaming white Tretorns. She’d bought them back in the spring, a lifetime ago, when her career wasn’t in the pits, when she hadn’t paused for a second over spending $250 for a pair of tennis shoes. The pluff would ruin them. Still, she didn’t dare risk going barefoot because the oyster shells would cut her feet to ribbons.

In the milk crate, Gina found a baseball cap with “Food Fight!” embroidered on the bill, and jammed it on her head. She took the knife and cut off a length of string, which she wound around her waist. She carefully put the knife back in its sheath and tucked it in the waistband of her jeans.

When she picked up the Zebco, she discovered a small flat plastic box underneath it. It was a cheap, ineffective tackle box, the kind unknowing Yankee tourists bought at any tourist trap on the southern coast, convinced that with it, they would catch the kind of trophy fish that would be the envy of the folks back home in Buffalo or Bayonne.

Opening the tackle box, she nearly cried with frustration when she saw the contents: a small plastic envelope of shiny gold hooks, some tiny lead weights, a plastic bobber, some gigantic fiberglass lures, and a package of neon-green-and-pink rubber worms. Useless crap, most of it. But she shook a hook and a weight into the palm of her hand and attached them to the line on the fishing reel, with the bobber positioned eight inches above them, then tucked the rest of the hooks into her pocket.

She picked up the ham sandwich and, lacking any other safe place to stash it, tucked it into the neckline of her top.

Then, shouldering the rigged fishing pole and dipnet over her shoulder, she stepped gingerly out of the cart and into the marsh. Fiddler crabs skittered away into their holes, and a startled marsh
hen rose from its hiding place in the grass with a sharp, remonstrative cackle.

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go,” Gina sang softly.

Iris’s walkway was narrow—three feet at its widest, and made of whatever cast-off materials her father had access to: chunks of broken concrete, weathered and rotting boards, discarded rubber tires—even, in one place, what appeared to be a sun-bleached tree trunk. Gina stepped cautiously, looking out at the undulating expanse of greenish gold marsh grass.

A hundred yards out, she saw the faded red paint of a wrecked bateau riding jauntily atop a bleached clump of driftwood. A boat, she thought. What she wouldn’t give for a boat right now.

Five hundred yards out, she found herself standing on a solid mound of oyster shells—with the gray-green waters of Runaway Creek lapping at its edges.

The tide was out.

Holding her breath, she stepped into the creek. The water swirling around her ankles was warm as bathwater. Her shoes made a sucking sound as they sank into the mud, and it was an effort, with each step, to keep them from being sucked right off her feet.

When the water was almost up to her hips, she decided it was time to fish or cut bait. Reaching into her neckline, she brought out the sandwich, pinched off a bit of ham, and threaded it onto the tiny gold hook of her fishing line.

The opposite side of the creek bank was maybe two hundred yards away. She cocked back the bail of the reel and cast her line, letting her wrists flick it, as her daddy had taught her all those years ago.

The bobber landed with a soft
plonk
, ten yards away. Not her best effort. But the wind was blowing toward her, and the light weight of her tackle and line would not send it any farther.

The little red-and-white bobber did its job, riding gently atop the slow-moving current of the creek.

She watched it intently. ‘Come on, baby,” she whispered, willing it to sink—a signal that she had a bite. “H’yah, fish!” she called.

Within a minute, the bobber dipped below the water’s surface. She felt a gentle tug on the line, and her spirits soared.

The line zigged quickly off her reel for a moment, before she jerked back hard, setting the hook as she’d been taught.

“H’yah, fish!” she called triumphantly, reeling as quickly as she could. In her mind, she was planning her catch. A nice spot-tail, she hoped. There was a cast-iron skillet in her designer kitchen back at Rebeccaville, and with the cayenne pepper and other seasonings she had on hand, she could quickly and easily blacken it on high heat. She’d seen some tomatoes and yellow banana peppers in Iris’s little kitchen plot, and perhaps, if she could talk her out of a couple of them, she could make a quick salsa with them and the onions and peppers from the countertop basket. She would slide the blackened redfish out of the skillet and onto a bed of buttered grits, and ladle the salsa over the redfish.

The fish fought, zigging away from her despite her crazed reeling, and she jerked the pole again, making sure she’d set the hook.

The line slackened a little, and she reeled in quickly. She caught a flash of silver through the greenish murk of the creek water, and then she reeled it up and out.

“Durn!” she cried, as the fish’s silver scales glinted in the sunlight. There was no telltale black spot near the fish’s tail. It was not a redfish. It wasn’t a fat sea trout. It was, she thought, a lowly, stinking, no-good, totally inedible pinfish.

It wriggled enthusiastically on the end of her hook, and she gritted her teeth, clamped her hands around the fish, and carefully extricated the hook from its mouth. She tossed it back into the creek without ceremony, and rebaited and recast.

An hour passed. She caught five more pinfish, each the exact same size as the first. The ham from her sandwich was nearly gone. The sun beat down, and the wind picked up. Something brushed against her ankles, and she let out an involuntary shriek.

Time to go, she thought. She’d wasted two hours, and had nothing to show for it except a nasty sunburn. As she trudged back to shore, she tried to cheer herself up. She still had four hours. Plenty of time.

Time to go to Plan B. She would ride over to the ferry dock and use the string as a crab line, tied around the last bit of her ham sand
wich for crab bait. Now she frowned. Why hadn’t she saved one of the pinfish to cut up and use for bait? What had she been thinking?

The mud sucked her tennis shoe clear off her foot. She reached down into the water to retrieve it, and a tiny wave caught her by surprise, knocking her off her feet and into the water.

She came up sputtering, and another wave broke over her head. Perfect. She reached back down into the water. Her $250 shoe was gone, washed away, probably even now providing shade to a whole school of redfish.

Gina struggled to her feet and limped forlornly back to the creek bank and her golf cart. Four hours to go. It was going to be a very long day.

And what about the enemy? What about Tate Moody? She’d seen no sign of him since he’d sprinted out of the ballroom earlier that morning. If there was any consolation, it was in knowing that somewhere on Eutaw Island, Tate Moody was faced with exactly the same equipment—or lack of it—and the same predicament.