Fed Up - By Jessica Conant-Park & Susan Conant Page 0,65

dress and a blonde wig or, heaven forbid, a man’s suit; the shelter did not encourage employment in prostitution, nor did it seek to promote cross-dressing. Before I left, I thumbed through a phone book that Leo dug up, copied down the numbers of a few cleaning services that could take care of the bathroom situation, and left Leo the task of making the calls.

During the entire drive home, I puzzled over the revelation that Francie had been the Mystery Diner. I’d previously seen Francie as a harmless, innocent victim. In contrast, the Mystery Diner’s reviews I’d read had been downright vicious. Of course, I hadn’t looked at the Mystery Diner’s complete works, so to speak; maybe from time to time she’d lavished praise on a chef. And I was baffled by Leo’s apparent obliviousness to the impact of the reviews and the anger they generated. Or was he playing dumb? And if Leo had murdered his wife, why was he keeping her secret identity a secret? The Mystery Diner’s reviews had provided many chefs and restaurant owners with a potential motive for murder. If the Mystery Diner had torn Josh to pieces, I’d have felt like killing her myself! Why wasn’t Leo pointing the finger of suspicion at the restaurant people whom Francie had enraged? Why wasn’t he deflecting suspicion to people who’d hated her?

Marlee had a defaced copy of the Mystery Diner’s beastly review of Alloy pinned up in her kitchen. Someone, probably Marlee herself, had stabbed that review with a knife. Digger, too, had had a rotten review. His attitude was more mixed than Marlee’s; he seemed torn between anger at the review and acceptance of it as an inevitable part of the restaurant business. Still, Francie’s reviews had excoriated both Marlee and Digger, both of whom had had the opportunity to add digitalis to the food that Francie had eaten. According to Leo, Francie’s identity as the Mystery Diner was a secret. Oh, really? Just how secret had her secret been? Leo had revealed it to me readily enough. Had he told others during Francie’s lifetime? Had she?

Robin. Yes, if Robin had had a prior relationship with Leo, he might have told her that Francie was the Mystery Diner, and Robin absolutely could have passed that information on to her good friend, Marlee. What’s more, Robin could have let it slip to Marlee that Leo was going to be the shopper chosen for the filming of Chefly Yours. If so, Marlee would have known ahead of time that she’d be in Francie’s kitchen and would thus have the opportunity to poison food that Francie, the despised reviewer, would eat.

I peeled into my parking space, left the clothes in the car, flew up the stairs to my condo, rushed to the computer, and searched for Francie’s reviews online. I’d only glimpsed the review posted in Alloy’s kitchen; I hadn’t really read it, in part because the knife sticking out of the center had distracted me. The review I found on the Web was worse than I’d imagined, far worse than merely scathing. As I read it, one damning sentence after another hit my eye:

What is meant to be a sleek and artful presentation is instead an exercise in pretension . . . Each dish is comprised of unsightly lumps; not only do these lumps not relate to one another in any conceivable way, but each is inedible on its own . . . Despite the chef’s effort at contemporary plate arrangement, I found the micro-green and herb-stem garnishes unattractive; far from whetting my appetite, they destroyed it. My roasted chicken had what appeared to be a small branch poking out of its thigh. I appreciate fresh herbs as much as the next diner, but there is no need to overwhelm a guest with what amounts to piles of shrubbery . . . The service? Worse than what one would expect at a fast-food joint . . . The trio of beef was enough to convince this reviewer that I would rather stick kabob skewers in my eyes than return to this restaurant.

Good God! What a horrible review! And, unfortunately for Marlee and Alloy, it was all the more horrible for being accurate—or at least consistent with my own experience. Perhaps the Mystery Diner’s reviews—Francie’s reviews—had, after all, been fair, just as Leo had claimed. Mean and nasty, yes, but on target. Still, it would have been possible to critique Alloy honestly yet tactfully, whereas Francie had clearly