Dough or Die Read online

“They’re in?”

  Olaya nodded. “They are, as you say, in.”

  Chapter 2

  Once Olaya made the decision to go ahead with the reality TV show, things moved with lightning speed. I imagined the filming would be weeks away. Boy, was I wrong. Olaya had been sitting on the reality TV proposal, so when she finally gave the green light, the production team was ready to get started.

  Today was the day. I walked into Yeast of Eden’s professional kitchen to find the Bread for Life women already at their stainless steel stations, chattering to one another. Only Esmé held back, quietly observing.

  Zula was the most boisterous of the group. She was a thirty-something woman from Eritrea and had first come to the United States with her husband. He’d left her with a newborn daughter and a body covered in bruises. Her daughter, Ella, was twelve now, and despite the fact that they barely scraped by, Zula was inherently optimistic. She stood about five feet eleven inches, and with her high cheekbones, flawless glowing skin, and long braided hair, she could have competed with any supermodel in the world.

  Claire was an American, was the youngest of the women, and from my knowledge of her, she didn’t have two nickels to scrape together. She was a twenty-two-year-old woman who seemed to be on her own. She was the observer of the group—not a talker, so while I was curious about her, I couldn’t get her to share much. She’d come into the bread shop a few times, always paying with a collection of coins she’d managed to gather. She was exactly the type of person Olaya and I hoped would benefit from the Bread for Life program, so I’d invited her. Truthfully, I hadn’t held out much hope that she’d take me up on it. But then she’d asked, “How much does it cost?”

  “It’s free. We want to get women baking, and we want them to share recipes from their cultures.”

  She’d looked at me cockeyed. “I don’t have any culture.”

  “Culture doesn’t have to come from another country. It can be a family tradition. My mom always made these little thumbprint cookies called kolaches.” The recipe had been passed down from my grandmother. I remembered the kolaches sold in Texas. I’d been so excited to discover the tradition my mother had passed on to me, but they were not the same thing at all. A dream dashed.

  I didn’t think Claire would come to the first Bread for Life class, but she did. Now I hoped she’d get something out of it.

  Amelie was in her early forties and had emigrated from Germany just a year before. “I had to get away,” she’d told us. “I mean, what was I going to stay for? I have no more family. That is a strange thought. I am completely alone in the world. Coming here I thought I could get away from thinking about that. Actually, though, it does not help.”

  She had never revealed what had happened to her family, or why she was alone in the world. Whatever her story, it hadn’t dampened her animation. The woman was always smiling and laughing.

  “We will help each other,” Olaya had said, squeezing Amelie’s hand reassuringly.

  Amelie had smiled, but this time it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Danke,” she’d said, managing a faint smile.

  Finally, there was Esmerelda. Esmé for short. She looked to be about my age—somewhere in her early to mid-thirties. She’d been in the US ten years ago, had gone back home to Zacatecas in Mexico, and now was back. She’d left her country behind, as had Amelie and Zula, and was starting over here. They’d left behind not only their families, whatever that meant to them, but their native languages, their cultures, the cities and states they’d grown up in, the food they’d spent their lives eating. Would any of them ever go back again, or would America become their permanent home? “I do not have a creative bone in my body,” Esmé had said when she’d introduced herself, “but baking bread, that is not like holding a pencil or paintbrush. I can mix dough, so that is my creative outlet.”

  I looked at them, laughing and talking. They had started out as strangers, but now, after classes every week for a month, they were on the way to being friends. They were an eclectic group, each coming from a different country and each with a unique background. I thought they might get to the point where they felt like long-lost sisters, but it was too soon for that. They were still tentative about sharing their stories or about giving too much information about themselves, but it was clear they were becoming close.

  Olaya came out from her office, greeting me with a smile. She clapped her hands, gathering everyone’s attention. “Mujeres,” she said, addressing the five of us. “The television crew is here.”

  She passed through the archway leading from the kitchen to the front of the bread shop, reappearing a minute later with several people in tow. One man hauled a heavy camera propped on his shoulder while several others lugged more cameras and lighting rigs. Another man came in dressed in a casual short-sleeved, button-down chambray shirt and jeans. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Was he a local?

  Before I could figure out where I’d seen him before, I was distracted by a woman I instantly recognized: Sandra Mays, local TV food celebrity turned national food personality. Wow. I couldn’t believe it, but I felt a little starstruck. It wasn’t like Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood were standing in front of me, but it felt almost as exciting. Well, maybe almost was a stretch, but it felt pretty darn thrilling.

  Sandra Mays had long brown hair cut in layers, each section perfectly curled and flipped. The style softened the all-business demeanor spoken by her power suit. She surged forward, her right arm outstretched. She was a study in incongruities. She greeted each of us in turn with a firm handshake, a penetrating look with her ice-blue eyes, but with a warm and engaging, “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Sandra Mays.”

  Zula, Amelie, and Esmé hadn’t been around Santa Sofia or California or the US long enough to know anything about Sandra Mays’s celebrity. Claire may have recognized her, but if she did, she didn’t let on. They weren’t awestruck or spellbound or anything else remotely in that arena. I was alone in that respect. I couldn’t help the grin that plastered itself on my face.

  My gaze drifted from Sandra Mays to the chambray-shirt guy, then to the cameramen and tech guys who had all stopped just inside the kitchen. From the bland expressions of the people behind the scenes, I imagined they’d been through this exact scenario more times than they could count. Sandra Mays’s star power didn’t faze them. If anything, they seemed to be slightly nonplussed at the lack of response or reaction from the women Sandra had greeted. What did that mean? How would Sandra take it? Was she vain and in need of external validation, or did the women’s lack of reaction make Sandra feel uncharacteristically normal?

  By the tight line of Sandra’s mouth by the time she finished her greetings, I went with option number one. She liked her celebrity, and more than that, she didn’t like not being recognized.

  And from the tight-lipped expression of the chambray-shirt man as his gaze passed over me, he didn’t like the starstruck attention I’d directed at her instead of him.

  I met the eyes of one of the cameramen. He lifted his eyebrows while simultaneously the sides of his mouth turned up in complete amusement. One of the tech guys, on the other hand, looked as if he was ready to burst out laughing. Clearly they’d seen Sandra’s side of this scenario before, but not the ambivalence of Zula, Claire, Amelie, or Esmé. The tech guy, in particular, looked pretty pleased to see Sandra knocked down a notch or two. The cameraman shrugged at chambray-shirt man in a way that said, It’s no big deal, dude. Just let her have her moment.

  Sandra Mays glided past the last workstation until she stood face-to-face with me. She smiled, locked eyes with me, took my hand in a firm shake, and said, just as she had to the others, “It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Sandra Mays.”

  If my grin had been big and sappy before, now I was sure it was over-the-top. She’d been a host on one of the local morning shows for as long as I could remember. My mother had loved watching her segments because they so often focused on food. I’d watched her on her own talk show
when I was a teenager, which again, often had cooking segments. I’d grown up, but she looked like she hadn’t aged a day. “I’ve been watching you since I was a kid,” I gushed.

  Her smile wavered, but she managed to hold it in place. “Well, isn’t that nice,” she said drolly as she dropped my hand.

  I blinked. Had she spoken through gritted teeth?

  “I didn’t mean . . . I just meant . . . You’ve always been so . . .” Finally I landed on, “Very nice to meet you, too.”

  “So you are a celebrity?” Zula asked, her eyes bright and wide.

  The guys on the periphery of the kitchen chuckled, but Sandra bristled. “I am Sandra Mays,” she said, hand on her chest, emphasis on the I.

  Zula didn’t pick up on Sandra’s self-aggrandizing tone. “Do you know Sunny Anderson?” Zula asked. “Or the Tasty girl who does all those short videos? I love her. Or Giada? Do you know Giada? She’s so skinny! How does she eat all that food and stay skinny like that, that is what I want to know.” She ran her hands down her sides to show how not skinny like Giada she was.

  Sandra brushed her hair back behind her shoulders, and turned her back on Zula. The chambray-shirt man answered for her. “She doesn’t know them and they don’t know her.”

  Sandra turned and glared at the guy. “How do you know with whom I am acquainted, and with whom I am not?”

  I was impressed by the grammatical structure of her sentence, if not by her attitude.

  The guy threw his hands up in defense. “So sorry. Please, set the record straight if you’re on friendly terms with Sunny, the Tasty girl, or Giada.”

  Sandra seethed, and turned her back again, this time to speak to Olaya. “We’ll need a private space in which to speak candidly with each woman—”

  “Sandy,” chambray-shirt man interrupted curtly. “I’m the showrunner.”

  She glared at him and clamped her mouth shut. The man stepped forward. “Mack Hebron,” he said.

  I did a mental head slap. Of course! Mack Hebron had been a Top Chef runner-up a few years back. I knew I’d recognized him. That gave him a lot more clout than Sandra Mays. No wonder he was the showrunner. The whole concept of America’s Best Bakeries was probably his. Why in the world, then, was Sandra trying to muscle in and overstep her bounds?

  I placed Mack in his mid-forties, but only because of the crow’s feet around his eyes. He looked fit and was handsome in a square-jawed, blond-haired Brad Pitt kind of way. He stretched out his hand, first to me, then to each of the four Bread for Life women, and lastly to Olaya. “Nice to meet you all. Sandy will be setting up individual interviews with you all today.”

  Sandra Mays spun around, her face as red as a beet. “Do. Not. Call. Me. Sandy.”

  Chambray-shirt guy, who I now knew was named Mack, smirked. “Sure thing, Sandra,” he said, drawing out the name dramatically.

  Oh boy. There was no love lost between these two. This reality TV show experience could be quite entertaining for us as a result.

  Sandra crossed her arms, standing back to listen as Mack took over. He spoke to the room, but mostly to Zula, Claire, Amelie, and Esmé. “We’ve gotten a little bit of background on each of you from Olaya and we’re so glad you agreed to be part of the show. Your life stories are very important to the success of our pilot,” he said. “We’ll get film of the session today. The candids today, along with additional background footage, and your story, Olaya, will all be cut together during editing.”

  I imagined an episode of Project Runway or the Food Network’s Spring Baking Championship where the designers or the bakers gave a blowby-blow of what they’d sewn or prepared, including every mistake, horror, and success. That type of filming added drama and gave the viewer a real sense of the people being featured, warts and all. If that was what Mack, as the showrunner, was going for, this could end up being a huge hit.

  Olaya led the crew, including Sandra and Mack, to a private space in the back of the kitchen. It was a conference room, of sorts, which she used when she met with brides planning their wedding menus, or restaurant owners or chefs needing to discuss how Yeast of Eden could enhance their food offerings. Once in a while, however, she hosted dinners there for friends and family, or for her loyal staff members. Bakery work was challenging, at best. It required early hours for the bakers, and consistency was key. Olaya showed her appreciation to the people who had stuck with her, who showed up on time, who went above and beyond what she expected, who clearly loved the bread shop as much as she did. That meant a special meal, prepared by her, every other month or so. The people who worked for Olaya knew that they were loved and appreciated.

  The camera and tech guys set up the space for filming with their lights and camera set on bulky tripods before bringing in the women, one by one, to do a test with Sandra and Mack. Zula bounced in, and then fifteen minutes later, she bounced back out. “I have never talked to a camera before. It is a very interesting experience. I must admit, I like it!”

  Zula was a natural, and I imagined the camera loved her.

  Claire almost shuffled as she started toward the conference room. The prospect of the on-camera interview had invigorated Zula, but it had enhanced every shy bone in Claire’s body. She’d agreed to be part of the program, but for a second I thought I’d have to link my arm through hers and guide her in. She managed, though, with just a little coaxing by Sandra. “You’re a natural beauty,” the woman said, coming across as far more gracious than she had a few minutes ago with her co-host. “The camera will love you.”

  I wasn’t so sure that had happened because Claire came back out of the room a mere six minutes after going in. I suspected her shyness got the better of her. It might take a lot of work to get her to open up on camera.

  Amelie came and went without fanfare. She had an easy smile and lighthearted demeanor about her. I could picture her shining for the camera, her bright complexion glowing under the lights, her voice excited and her laughter contagious.

  And then there was Esmé. She had the fingernail of her thumb pressed between her teeth when she went into the room, her nerves getting the better of her. By the time she came out again, her complexion had turned pallid and ghostlike. She had stage fright and I wondered if she’d ever spoken publicly in her life. I gave her hand a little squeeze and she gave me a faint smile in return as she went to join the others.

  Finally, I thought, we were ready to begin the class.

  “Ivy?”

  I turned at Sandra’s voice calling me from the doorway of the makeshift interview room. She beckoned me with a crook of her finger.

  “Your turn,” she said after I crossed to her.

  My brain stuttered and I pressed the flat of my palm to my chest. “My turn?”

  “Of course. We need test footage on everyone, and you’re an integral part of the bread shop.”

  I started to back away, suddenly understanding Claire and Esmé’s anxiety. “I just help out, kind of like an apprentice. Olaya and the other women are the story.”

  “They are, I agree,” Mack said, stepping slightly in front of Sandra. “But from what I hear, you have an interesting story, too. You’re part of the appeal of Yeast of Eden, and we want the whole story.”

  “But there’s nothing interesting about me,” I tried again.

  Sandra shook her head, disagreeing with me—and maybe more importantly, agreeing with Mack. “Not true. From what we hear, you moved away from Santa Sofia after high school, had a successful photography business, then came back to be a support to your family after your mother tragically died.”

  My life wasn’t a soundbite, but that’s exactly what Sandra made it seem like. I bristled.

  “Sandy’s right,” Mack said.

  Sandra stiffened, opening her mouth to chastise him about her name, I felt sure, but then she closed it again. “People watch the shows to see us and to see the stories of real people just like them. Your story is important,” she told me. “It’s poignant. It’s real.”

 
; I frowned. The network had done their homework. My nerves heightened. I wanted this show to happen for Olaya and the bread shop, and to showcase Claire, Zula, Esmé, and Amelie, but broadcasting my own story was unsettling. Before I could formulate an actual coherent thought about my feelings, though, Sandra went on. “Rumor also has it that you’ve been instrumental in solving some of Santa Sofia’s recent crimes.”

  Well, that was true. A few situations had hit too close to home and I’d had no choice but to dig in and help. In the process, I’d discovered I had a knack for crime solving.

  “Please, Ms. Culpepper. Just a few minutes.” Sandra edged in front of Mack and smiled in a way that told me she was very used to getting what she wanted and didn’t take no for an answer. Local-turned-national celebrity went a long way. She reached her hand out, lightly touching my arm to get me moving into the makeshift interview room.

  Mack shut the door behind him after he came in the room and directed me to a stool. “I’ll ask you a few questions, and you just respond to them. It’s that easy.”

  Easy for him. He was used to being in front of a camera. I, on the other hand, like the cameraman getting ready to film me, preferred to be behind the eyepiece, which for me, meant my Canon. I sat on the stool, held my chin up, wished I’d worn a jean jacket on top of my Yeast of Eden T-shirt, and waited.

  “We’ll ask her a few questions,” Sandra corrected. Mack didn’t bother responding. Yikes. I didn’t know how these two were going to pull off a successful television show when they clearly didn’t like each other and couldn’t get through five minutes without one of them contradicting the other.

  Mack stepped back and leaned against the wall, sweeping his arm wide for Sandra to take the lead. She smirked at him, but when she faced me again, she was all professional. She launched right into her questions. “I understand you met Olaya Solis during a bread-making class here at Yeast of Eden. Would you tell me about that?”

  I drew in a breath to calm my nerves, telling myself that they could edit out my mistakes. “Well, as you know, my mother died—”