It was 2:47 AM and tears were running down my cheeks. But I wasn’t sure if it was the guajillo chiles, sizzling in the hot oil, releasing fiery capsaicin molecules into the air that were making my eyes red and watery…
…or the disjointed images that kept swirling through my head. The dented wrecker pulling the drowned Porsche up the muddy bank, the dark shape slumped against the window, Max’s face white and swollen, a hole in his left temple.
“One hundred grams of guajillo chiles.” I could hear Maria’s firm voice: “Buy good quality chles at the market. Don’t let that thief sell you the dried up dirty ones,” she glared at me sternly. “They must be clean and supple. Fry them gently one at a time and don’t let them burn.”
You’re wondering, of course, what I was doing in the kitchen at this ungodly hour. after being grilled by the police for hours. My husband was missing, his car was found in the river with a dead body inside, and now he was suspected of murdering his old friend Max.
Well, I was upset. And when I’m upset, I eat. But before I eat, I cook. That calms me down. When Marco disappeared, I was working on a job for Gastronome. They’d paid a certain drunken, coke-snorting, addle-brained chef, who can’t get a job cooking but whose name still resonates with their readers, to ride the bus around Mexico on $60 a day and report on all the great cheap food and fabulous cooks he found along the way.
“One medium onion, sliced thin, five cloves of garlic, sliced thin, fried in the same oil as the chiles until golden….”
But the chef couldn’t write—from the looks of his disgustingly stained, scrawled notes, he couldn’t even hold a pen--so my ex-editor, Jeanette, forgiving my defection to the third world (gastronomically speaking), emailed: “Get me 2,000 words and six edible recipes by the end of the week and I’ll run your piece on prickly pears in October.” I didn’t reply. An hour later she texted me, “Plus $2,500.” I waited. The phone rang, “Plus a byline on this one. Come on, Claire. We’re going to press on Wednesday.”
So that would be that would be why I was making manchamanteles—also known as “tablecloth stainer”—at three in the morning.
“Soak the chiles in hot water until they soften and pull them to pieces. Put them in the blender with a stick of cinnamon…” I went to the pantry and pulled out the pale blue jar of Ceylon cinnamon. I opened the top and breathed in the sweet, warm fragrance…
Marco. In the week since he had disappeared, I had been angry and then scared; I had pushed him far to the back of my mind. But as I inhaled the scent of cinnamon, a slow heat began to spread through my body. The crook of his shoulder had the same warm, woody, faintly sweet smell and it sent my mind spinning back…
A cool April evening two years ago: I was floating down the grand marble staircase at the joint Gastronome-Explorers Society affair. Elephant steak was on the menu, and waiters were circulating with plates of chapulines fried grasshoppers from Oaxaca and tiny puff pastry squares topped with ragout of roasted Peruvian guinea pig…
Heads were turning. I was wearing my mother’s vintage Giorgio Sant’Angelo evening coat. It’s sixties’ rock star glam: handstitched orange and cream velvet patchwork, inset with bronze metallic stars, edged from neck to toe in purple ostrich feathers. In a sea of New York noir (“Black is the new black,” Vogue intoned that year) you could say that I was rather visible. Which made what happened next a near disaster.
“…and four blackened tomatoes…” I turned the heat up under the comal and began to sear the plum tomatoes.
I missed the bottom step. I was airborne, heading feet first towards the circular reflecting pool, when a hand grasped my arm and another caught me firmly around the waist and a deep voice murmured, ‘Steady on…’ in an accent I couldn’t place. And when I turned my head I was looking into a pair of brilliant blue eyes, cool and amused, but not unkind…
“Blend the chiles, cinnamon and charred tomatoes with some chicken stock.” The roar of the blender was almost deafening. I looked at the chunky mixture whirling in the jar. As it broke down and became smooth, it took on the color of coagulating blood.
Marco couldn’t have killed Max. Something horrible had happened in that desolate parking lot, but I knew that he couldn’t have murdered the old man. He was remote, undependable, driven, infuriating. But he wasn’t a killer. Was he?
“Now add two pears, two apples, two peaches, three cups of pineapple, cut in large dice...” I picked up the knife and began to chop the fruit.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flickering light outside.
My heart began to pound. I kept chopping, slowly, methodically.
The light flared again. It was rising up into the trees.
The knife slipped and I gashed my finger. Blood began to ooze into the fruit.
Who was there?