Dough or Die Read online

  She paused long enough that I figured this is where they’d cut in some footage from an interview with Olaya. Sandra started again. “Olaya is a magician with bread. Everyone in Santa Sofia knows firsthand that anything baked at Yeast of Eden will change their lives for the better. Olaya is quite the community activist, as well. As an immigrant with a heartwarming success story, she hasn’t rested on her laurels. Instead, she’s worked to pay it forward, as they say, by developing a program called Bread for Life. It’s kind of like the old adage, give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. That is exactly what Olaya intends to do with the Bread for Life program. These women come together for fellowship and baking, sharing the breads of their different cultures with one another, and then, hopefully, taking what they’ve learned and spreading that love through their continued baking. We are thrilled to be featuring Yeast of Eden as our first bakery featured in America’s Best Bakeries.”

  So this was the intro Mack had referred to yesterday. I had to admit, it was good. I started to say so—to no one in particular—but stopped when Mack came back in from the front of the shop. He took one look around and stopped short. “What the hell?”

  Sandra gave him a withering look. “Where did you go, Mack? We had to start without you.”

  He surged forward, his amiable demeanor gone, his lips suddenly thin and tight. “Who do you think you are, Sandy? This is not a one-woman show. I am the goddamned showrunner and we are co-hosts. Co. Hosts. That means I am involved in everything connected with this show.” He quickly scanned the room and threw up his hand apologetically. “Sorry for the inconvenience, folks—”

  Sandra surged toward Mack, red creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks. “Let me tell you. I am going to be the star of this show. After that stunt you pulled in New York, you’re lucky I even agreed to be seen with you—”

  The veins in his neck flexed, but his voice miraculously remained controlled. “The stunt I pulled? That was all on you, Sandy.”

  Her eyes bulged, her face turned fire-engine red, and for a second I thought she might spontaneously combust. “Don’t call me that!” she screeched.

  I shot a frenzied look at Zula, Claire, Amelie, and Esmé, wanting to get them out of the kitchen, but they were completely focused on the unfolding drama in front of them, drawn to it like moths to a flame. The other crew members watched Mack and Sandra, too, for that matter, but where the four women were enthralled (and looked slightly terrified) the crew watched as if the scene unfolding before them was no more entertaining than an amateur golf tournament on a cloudy day being watched by people who couldn’t care less about putting a tiny ball into a tiny hole.

  Mack folded his arms across his chest, looking altogether unconcerned about the state Sandra was in. “It’s your name,” he said before leaning in close to her and whispering something in her ear. She recoiled, then let loose her arm and shoved his shoulder. The blow hardly fazed him. His upper body jerked back slightly, but his feet never moved. He was rooted to the ground.

  Sandra’s hands were fisted next to her sides. A vein in her forehead bulged. God, I hoped she wouldn’t have an aneurism. Somehow she managed to control her voice. “You are a horrible human being, Mack.” She turned her back on him and muttered something under her breath that sounded like, “Karma, Mack. You can’t fight karma.”

  I had no idea what he’d actually whispered to her, but I got the distinct feeling that their relationship had gone beyond the professional at some point. I didn’t want to be on Sandra Mays’s bad side.

  I looked at the baking racks, hoping something was still left that could calm her down, but it was the end of the day, the racks were empty, and there was nothing magical about the crumbs that remained. She sucked in a breath. Then another. None of us could tear our eyes away from her. The vertical vein in her forehead sunk back into place. Her color returned to normal. If not for her fisted hands, I would have thought the crisis had been averted, but I could sense the hard simmer just under her skin. She was one degree away from a boil.

  She looked at Ben. A silent communication transpired between them and he raised the camera to his shoulder, giving one succinct nod. “Ready to go again.”

  Sandra didn’t look at Mack. Didn’t make eye contact. Although Mack, with an expression I couldn’t quite read—Was it contempt? Or disinterest? —did look at Sandra. He wasn’t fazed by her, which gave him a leg up in their battle. She, on the other hand, was struggling to maintain control. Mack had completely unsettled her. Com-plete-ly. Everyone scurried to their positions. Zula, Claire, Amelie, and Esmé shot puzzled glances at each other, then at me. I forced a smile. Was this the way things were in the volatile world of reality TV?

  I tied on my apron and took my place next to Esmé. Sandra turned to face us all, her smile as strained as mine was. “Are we ready?”

  Mack looked at Ben and rolled his index finger in the air. It was the okay for Ben to count down. He held up his hand and counted down on his fingers, saying, “Five. Four,” then he mouthed, “Three. Two. One,” and pointed at Mack.

  Mack Hebron was a pro. I knew he’d studied in France and had had a restaurant in North Carolina, where he had been close to being a Top Chef—his foray into reality television. He’d transitioned to pastries at some point and had worked as one of the head pastry chefs at a dessert bar restaurant in Manhattan before being tapped by the cable network as the next big thing. And he was. His expertise and success with his first baking show on a cable food network had been the impetus for multiple other shows, including this one: America’s Best Bakeries. How Sandra Mays got involved was a mystery, but she seemed to think she was the star, not Mack.

  Mack started the same intro Sandra had just given, pausing when it was time for Sandra to say her lines. They’d clearly rehearsed it. The fact that she’d gone through it alone meant that she’d intentionally pushed his buttons.

  Once the intro was done, I gestured for Amelie to step up to the demonstration station. It was just like the other stations with the exception of the huge overhead mirror angled to allow the other people in the kitchen to see what was happening. Olaya used that spot to lead her classes. Her students could see the ingredients, how she mixed things together, and her method for kneading.

  Amelie raised her arms, waving her hands. She was summoning up her on-camera personality. “Attention!” Her voice bellowed and everyone’s attention came to her. “Today,” she said, “we are going to make Brezel.”

  We looked at her blankly.

  “It is German for . . . can you not guess?”

  I said the word over and over in my head, mouthing it, then saying it under my breath. “Brezel. Brezel. Brezel—Oh! Pretzel!”

  Amelie’s face lit up and she clapped. “Exactly! Pretzel! I thought and thought about what German bread to teach to you. Pumpernickel came to my mind. I do love the pumpernickel. I also thought of Fünfkornbrot—five-seed bread. But after Zula’s hembesha, I thought, no, no, I must do the Brezel. The pretzel.” She grinned, feigning shyness. “It is very good.”

  “Who doesn’t like a good pretzel?” Sandra asked, inserting herself into the frame.

  Amelie clapped again. Her enthusiasm was contagious. I couldn’t help but smile along with her. “Right. Yes! Everyone loves pretzels.” She set to work, taking us through the process of mixing the dough. “The Brezel is really like a bread. Traditionally, they are dipped in a lye bath. It is science. The lye reacts to the dough to give the crust the dark brown and crunchy outer layer.”

  “Lye?” Sandra’s eyes went wide. “Isn’t lye dangerous?”

  “Yes, yes. You must protect the eyes especially. But we will not use lye. Instead, we will make a baking soda solution that mimics the chemical reaction we want to happen.”

  Okay. Interesting. Pretzels were not something Olaya had ever made at Yeast of Eden, at least to my knowledge. She was going to be so disappointed to miss learning about something new.

  We fol
lowed Amelie step by step as we dissolved the yeast in warm water, then mixed it with the flour and sugar. We kneaded butter into the dough, adding drips of water to get to the right consistency. “We let the dough rest, meanwhile we clean up.”

  That’s just what we did, putting the ingredients away and washing the dough hooks from our mixers. Amelie brought us all together again and we moved on to the next steps. “We knead the dough, then cut it into twelve pieces. Make sure they are the same size,” she said. We watched her, then copied the action, as she rolled the first piece into a twenty-inch thin length, tapering the ends. “Now we form the Brezel,” she said. We all watched the mirror above her and did as she demonstrated. First she formed the length of dough into the letter U. Next she crossed the ends over one another, twisting them in the process. Finally, she brought the ends down and placed them at the bottom of the U, just at the curve.

  I looked at hers, then looked at mine. Hers looked like a pretzel. Mine looked thin and unappetizing. I frowned. It was harder than it seemed.

  One by one, we rolled and folded our dough into the traditional pretzel shape, laying them on a piece of parchment.

  “They must go into the refrigerator now,” she said. “One hour.”

  Ben filmed us taking our baking trays to the walk-in refrigerator and sliding them onto a rack inside. “Why do you need to refrigerate them?” Sandra asked.

  “If you baked, you’d know the answer to that.” Mack’s voice had been quiet, the muttering not meant for anyone to hear. I pretended like I hadn’t.

  “More science,” Amelie said. “The Brezel forms a hard layer, like a skin, you know? Then when we dip the Brezel into the baking soda solution, the skin absorbs that liquid in a unique way. It is what makes the traditional shiny brown crust of the Brezel.”

  Made sense. Science in action. The hour passed quickly as we all fielded questions from Mack and Sandra, finished cleaning our mixing bowls and stations, and prepared the baking soda solution on the stove. When the water-and-soda mixture was boiling, we retrieved our pretzels and used slotted spoons to carefully drop the pretzels into the bubbling water. “Turn them over after ten seconds,” Amelie said. We had only six burners on a commercial stove, so took turns dipping and placing our pretzels back on our parchment-lined baking sheets.

  “Now, we score and salt,” Amelie said. She went back to her station with her tray. We followed suit, each of us taking up our sharp knife and drawing the blade across the dough. She sprinkled her pretzels with coarse salt, and we did the same. “Now we bake at four hundred degrees for just about fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes for a darker crust. Very, very easy!”

  After we took them out of the ovens to cool, Sandra sighed as if she was expelling the weight of the world. “Let’s take a break, shall we?”

  The crew looked longingly at the cooling pretzels. “They must cool a little bit,” Amelie said. “We will burn our mouths otherwise. In Germany, we have them with butter, but you can do like the Americans do and have them with mustard. It is your choice.”

  “Cut,” Mack said. “We’ll take a break. Pretzels afterward.”

  That was all the permission any of the crew needed. They scattered to the front of the bread shop and out to the street, while Mack headed out to the back parking lot.

  The four Bread for Life women fell in together and disappeared through the swinging doors into the bread shop. A second later, the bell on the front door tinkled and their chatty voices faded away.

  Ben lowered his camera. He grabbed a piece of bread that had been left on one of the bakery racks in the kitchen, uncapped a water bottle to take a long swig, and disappeared to put his camera down in the back room. He reappeared, bread in hand, and walked out the back door of the kitchen to the parking lot without a word to anyone. Smoke break, I thought.

  Sandra watched him intently. She gave a little shake of her head as she watched him go

  “Is he okay?” I asked.

  She took out her cell phone and checked the screen. “I don’t know. Something’s up, but he doesn’t share like he used to.”

  Which implied that he had shared once upon a time—and that they’d been close enough to have that type of friendship. All I could think was that everyone was acting so strangely. Reality TV seemed to bring out the weird in people. Before I could ask Sandra about her history with Ben the cameraman, she dialed a number and promptly vanished into the front of the bread shop. Once again the bell on the door tinkled, and she was gone.

  My break was going to be spent cleaning up the front of the bread shop. I found a brown paper bag in which to put the remains of the day so I could deliver them to the food closet on my way home, grabbed a cloth, went out to the front, and started wiping down the counters. I moved on to the little bistro tables, running the cloth over them, then the seats of the chairs. People strolled by the shop, glancing in through the windows. One couple stopped and peered in. The woman said something to the man, who nodded. They walked on, but I knew they’d be back another day to buy bread.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Ben turning the corner from a side street onto Cambria, cell phone to his ear. He’d walked from the back parking lot to the beach side of the bread shop, immersed in whatever conversation he was having. It did not look like a pleasant one. His eyes were still shaded by his cap, but red crept up his neck and onto his cheeks. He gestured wildly with one hand. He wasn’t yelling, but he was definitely agitated.

  I was inside with windows between us, but I still turned away to give him privacy. Strands of my hair had come loose, so I undid my topknot, bent over, letting my hair fall over my head, then gathered it up, twisted it up again, and secured it with the band.

  The sudden sound of screeching tires, followed by a loud thunk and screams sent a chill through my body. I spun around to face the window again.

  A car sped away into the distance, nothing but a blur of color and taillights. And there, in the middle of the street, lay Ben Nader.

  Chapter 7

  Chaos. There was no other way to describe the time immediately following the accident. Sirens screamed in the distance, growing closer by the second. Blue and red ambulance lights flashed. The police closed the road on both sides, cordoning off the area. Passersby stopped to stare, cell phones out and at the ready.

  The Bread for Life women had come back and stood in shock, staring first at the body in the road, then at each other. Even from where I stood, just outside the bread shop, I could see Claire swipe tears away from under her eyes.

  I watched helplessly as, a block away, Sandra Mays strutted down the street on her way back from wherever she’d been. As she grew closer, she stopped, gawking at the crowd that had gathered and at the blocked-off street. She scanned the area and spotted me standing under Yeast of Eden’s awning. She hurried toward me. “What’s going on—” she started, but her head swiveled to look at the street and the words fell away. “Is that—” She lurched forward. “Oh my God! Is that Ben?”

  I looked back at the cameraman’s body, lying in an awkward, unnatural position, legs splayed, head cocked, blood pooling, and could imagine the anguish Sandra was experiencing. I hadn’t sensed a lot of love or affection between the TV personality and the cameraman, but it was clear they had some sort of history. Chances are they’d worked together for a long time. Of course she’d be distraught. She made her way through the crowd toward Ben. The paramedics were working carefully now, moving Ben onto a backboard and into the ambulance. I wondered if I should go with Sandra—to stop her . . . or to help her . . .

  “Jesus, Ivy, what happened?”

  I jumped at the voice behind me, turning to see Emmaline Davis, Santa Sofia’s sheriff, my best friend since forever, and my soon-to-be sister-in-law. She took one look at my face and took my hand in hers, giving it a squeeze. “Hey, Ivy. Are you all right?”

  “I-I don’t know, Em. Is he dead? It looks like he’s dead.”

  She shook her head. “I just talked to the pa
ramedics. It’s dicey, but they think he’ll make it. He’s got a battle ahead of him, though.”

  We stood side by side. She dropped my hand and we both folded our arms over our chests. Ben Nader. He’d just been inside with us all, aggravating Sandra with his non-conversation. Just yesterday, he’d told Miguel and me about his philosophical escape as a kid. How could he be laid out on the road fighting for his life?

  Em held a small notepad. She went into detective mode. “Did you see it happen?”

  I shook my head. “I saw him standing by the curb talking on the phone. I looked away and then . . . and then . . .” The sound of screeching tires roared in my ears.

  “Any idea who he was talking to?”

  “No, but—”

  “But what?”

  I hesitated. Was I entirely sure that he’d been upset? I thought back. Yes, I was sure. I described what I’d seen. “It didn’t look like a happy conversation.”

  “We have his phone. We’ll check the call history.”

  Something about that statement made me snap my head up. Had he been so upset that he’d stepped out in front of the car that had hit him? Or had the phone call distracted him and he hadn’t seen the car? “What are you thinking?”

  “It’s not what I’m thinking. It’s what I saw.”

  I turned to her. “What do you mean?”

  “We found a bystander with video.”

  Now I stared. “Of the hit-and-run?”

  Em adjusted her navy Santa Sofia Sheriff’s Department cap over her braided hair before she answered. “There’s a woman. She was taking a video of the ocean view. She didn’t catch the whole thing, but she got part of it.”

  My heart was pounding out of my chest. Had she caught the part that would identify the driver? “So you got a license plate?”

  “Unfortunately, no. She only got the side of the car.”

  “Make and model?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Can you see the driver?”

  Again, she shook her head. “The car was heading west. Empty passenger seat and no view of the driver from what I can tell. I’m going to have our tech guy see what he can see. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Mr. Nader was crossing the street and didn’t see it coming. Like you said, he looks to have been talking on his phone. Either the driver also didn’t see him, or . . .”