The Cook's Secret Ingredient. Meg Maxwell
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a peek at him. He stood to the side of the window, staring at her, his expression unchanged. Is he worried about a relative? The thought flitted out of her head as quickly as it had come in. She wasn’t psychic. She couldn’t read minds. But sometimes a thought would drift inside her like smoke, sometimes so fleetingly she couldn’t grasp it.
She slathered each side of the French roll with the rémoulade of mustard and mayonnaise and horseradish sauce, then layered the sautéed shrimp and added tomato slices and onion. She could feel “it’ll be okay” sparking from her fingers, infusing the po’boy.
She handed him the yellow cardboard tray holding his sandwich. He nodded and thanked her, then moved a few feet over to a pub table that lined the edge of the grass.
He shot another glare her way, then glanced left and right, up and down Blue Gulch Street. Was he waiting for someone? Watching for something? He’d been eyeing the truck for at least twenty minutes. He took a bite of the po’boy and she could tell, at least, that he liked the sandwich. He took another bite. No change in his expression. Then another. Still no change.
He appeared at the window. Same expression. Same glare.
The sautéed-shrimp po’boy hadn’t worked on him. According to the man’s face, it most certainly was not going to be okay.
Huh. That was weird. And a first, really.
“Are you the daughter of Miranda Mack?” he asked.
She stiffened. “Yes,” she said, wondering what this was about.
He looked around the inside of the narrow truck before his hazel eyes settled back on her. “So you just serve po’boys and cannoli out of the truck? Not fortunes, too?”
Did he want his fortune told? Olivia didn’t get that sense from him at all. “I’m not a fortune-teller. Just a cook.”
He stared at her. “Look, I’d appreciate it if you could settle a family problem your mother caused.”
Uh-oh. She’d been here a time or two or three or four over the years. Sometimes her mother’s predictions upset her clients or their families, and when pleading with Miranda hadn’t helped, they’d come to Olivia, asking her to intervene, hoping she could convince her mother to change the fortune or “see” something else.
He stepped closer. “Your mother told my father a bunch of nonsense about the second great love of his life, and now he’s traveling all over Texas to find this woman. I’d appreciate it if you could put an end to this...ridiculousness.”
Oh, boy.
“Mr....” she began, stalling.
“My name is Carson Ford.”
Olivia knew that name. Well, not Carson, but Ford. Her mother had mentioned a Ford. Edward or something like that.
“My father is Edmund Ford,” he said, lowering his voice. “Suffice it to say he’s a bigwig at Texas Trust here in Blue Gulch. He’s also a vulnerable widower. Your mother told him that his second great love is a hairstylist named Sarah with green eyes. He’s now racing around to every hair salon in the county asking for Sarahs with green eyes. People are going to think he’s nuts. He’s had seven haircuts in the past two weeks.”
Oliva froze. Hair salon. Sarah. Green eyes. That could only be one person.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “She filled you in on this scam?”
Olivia bit her lip. Her aunt, her mother’s sister who’d gotten into a terrible argument with Miranda five years ago and hadn’t been seen or heard from since, was named Sarah. And a hairstylist. With green eyes.
What the heck was this? Oh, Mom, what did you do?
He waited for her to respond, but when she didn’t, he said, “Look, will you please talk some sense into my father? Explain that your mother ran a good game, a scam, fed people what they wanted to hear for lots of money. My father can go back to his normal life and I can focus on my own. This is interfering with my job and people are counting on me.”
She felt herself bristle at the word scam, but she ignored it. For now. “What is your job?” She hadn’t meant to ask that, but it came tumbling out of her mouth.
“I’m a private investigator. I specialize in finding people who don’t want to be found—mostly of the criminal and/or fraudulent variety,” he added with emphasis.
She stepped back, not expecting that. She didn’t know what she’d expected him to say he did for a living, but private investigator wasn’t it. Actually, she’d been thinking lawyer. Shark, at that.
She herself had thought about hiring a private investigator to find her aunt when her own online searches had led nowhere. Suffice it to say, to use his own phrase, that Carson Ford would not be interested in helping to locate this particular Sarah. “My mother is not a criminal or a fraud.” And she’s gone, she thought, her heart pinching.
He didn’t respond. He just continued to stare at her as if waiting for her to give something away with her expression, catch her in a lie. This man clearly also paid attention to people; it was his job to do so. She would have to be careful around him.
Wait a minute. No, she did not. Her mother’s business was her mother’s business. Olivia had no secrets, nothing to hide about Miranda Mack.
Her mother’s face, her dark hair wound into an elegant topknot affixed with two rhinestone-dotted sticks, her fair complexion, her long, elegant nose, her penchant for iridescent silver jewelry and long filmy scarves all came to mind. Olivia ached for the sight of Miranda. What she would give for one more day with her mother, another hug.
Despite their differences, Olivia missed her mother so much that tears crept up on her constantly. In the middle of the night. When she was brushing her teeth. While she was making her mother’s favorite meal, pasta carbonara with its cream and pancetta, the only thing that could comfort Olivia lately when grief seized her. And guilt. For how Olivia had always dismissed her mother’s surety that Olivia had a gift. Or that Miranda, the most sought-after fortune-teller in town—in the county—had had a gift, either. A crystal ball and some floaty scarves and deep red lipstick and suddenly her mother turned into Madam Miranda behind garnet velvet curtains. People liked the shtick, her mother had insisted. Olivia would say that three quarters of the town’s residents believed that Miranda had been the real deal. A quarter had rolled their eyes. Olivia was mostly in the latter camp with a pinkie toe in the former. How to make sense of all her mother’s predictions coming true?
Like the one about Olivia’s own broken heart. A proposal that would never come from her long-term boyfriend. He’s not the one, Miranda had insisted time and again, shaking her head.
“My mother passed away six weeks ago,” Olivia said, her own blindness, her losses and this man’s criticism all ganging up on her. “I won’t stand for you to disparage her.”
His expression softened. “I did hear about her death. I am very sorry for your loss.”
She could tell that part was sincere, at least.
And she’d been right, she thought as she glanced at him. He was worried about a relative. His father.
He cleared his throat. “My father is expecting me for dinner tonight at his house. If you could come and talk some sense into him, I’d appreciate it.”
What? No. No. No. He was inviting her to dinner at his father’s house? To talk the man out of looking for this second great love? Who, according to Miranda, was very likely Olivia’s aunt.
A woman her mother had been estranged from for five years. Had her mother “known” that this prediction would lead the man’s son, a private investigator, to get huffy and intervene? That it would bring Sarah Mack home? If it brought Aunt Sarah home.
Olivia had never known her mother to do anything for her own gain. Never. If Miranda had told Edmund Ford that his second true love was a hairstylist named Sarah with green eyes, then her mother