The diamonds in Glenda’s tiara battled with the diamond on her finger for center stage, but they were both dim compared to the mischief in that woman’s eyes. Glenda’s gaze landed on Joe’s and her smile bloomed with both mischief and a slow wink as she stroked the soft fur of Kodo. Obviously, Kodo’s presence had warned Glenda to them being there, but now that she’d caught their eyes, she slid her gaze toward where the contestants were submitting their entries.
“The judging will be anonymous,” Jean explained, watching for when Tami noticed Glenda on the judge’s stage. The seats in the audience were filling rapidly. “Supposedly, no one will know whose dish they are judging, but Glenda will know Tami’s style without a doubt.”
“Will we have to withdraw?” Joe asked, wondering where the AIs were going with this plot and trying to get Jean, Tami, or Glenda to give him a clue with their currently underused skill of communicating with each other mentally.
“I’m not sure,” Jean admitted.
Your good, shocked reaction is exactly why we didn’t tell any of you that I was coming, Glenda spoke into Joe's mind finally just as he was about to panic. If he needed to throw a wrench in the plans to keep the tension up, he had to know what was going on, didn’t he? Joe started to relax and then thought better of it. They had been getting some feedback in the comments that Joe wasn’t as good at acting as he should be. His skill could go up all day long, but if he was also a director, it didn’t quite work right because he was always just a little bit in charge of what was going on.
“Does Tami know?” Joe asked Jean, letting his worry stay on his face and using every ounce of his acting skill for it.
Joe was answered with a squeal that rivaled the lobby of the hotel and rose over the crowd like a bomb siren. Tami had spotted Glenda on the stage after turning in her dish. All thought of keeping their relationship quiet was shattered along with Joe’s eardrums. Then again, Tami was that person who ranged from zero to a thousand with nary a step in between, so she was certainly playing to character.
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“Tam Tam!!” Glenda didn’t even bother to pretend to have a lack of knowledge of her friend either, throwing up her hands and rushing across the stage, nearly toppling Kodo, who hadn’t been ready for the quick movement. Then again, maybe he had been ready for it, because his next move was to slip a paw into the purse of the judge next to where Glenda had been seated. That judge, a Mrs. Courtney Pomfrey according to her nametag, was too busy pursing her judgy lips at the two women embracing at the edge of the stage to notice Kodo. Joe quickly looked away to where everyone else was watching Glenda and Tami embrace with cheek-kissing enthusiasm.
“This is impossible,” Pursed-lipped Pomfrey called out above the whispers that were starting to ripple through the crowd.
An announcer, who had a nametag that proclaimed him Mayor Pomfrey, tapped the microphone on the podium to try to pry the attention of the crowd away from Tami and Glenda, who ignored him as they giggled at each other. He got more assertive by saying, “Ladies,” in that tone that men have to shut women up. That got the goat of at least half the audience, who were what made up a southern area of this side of the Mississippi, who turned to glare at Mayor Pomfrey, not that Joe would have invoked the peril Mayor Pomfrey’s tone created.
“Us?” Tami and Glenda turned to the man with mirrored arched brows and that was why Joe wouldn’t have done it.
“Is there a relationship that we should know about here, Ms. Glenda?” Mayor Pomfrey groped for his masculinity again under the glare of more than just the pair of women.
“I had no idea that one of my oldest friends would be competing here,” Glenda proclaimed, as Tami put on a pretty flush of faked embarrassment that made Joe green with acting envy. “You are competing aren’t you, darling?”
“Yes, actually,” Tami admitted without a touch of concern or dismay. “I just turned in my dish.”
“You are quite lucky, Mr. Mayor,” Glenda eyed Mayor Pomfrey in a way that had him squirming. “Though no one has a chance against her.”
“This does cause a pickle,” Mayor Pomfrey tried to sound stern, but he’d lost all credibility. The crowd was already turning on him.
“There is bound to be bias,” Mrs. Purse-Lipped Pomfrey sniffed, and Joe realized now that she must be the wife of Mayor Pomfrey for the way she cast stern glances at her fellow-southern-women who were supposed to be supportive of her man. This was the language of southern gentility. It had been studied and perfected as an official language of southern women. Even the law didn’t dare regulate the power balance between genders in the South. That was a block of women who knew how to get to the polls for what they wanted. The phone-tree trumped the political spin-masters in a mysterious way that was impenetrable to anyone with Joe’s anatomy. “We either cannot allow Ms. Glenda or Ms. Tami to participate in order to remain fair to the other contestants.”
There was a murmur that spread, and Joe distinctly heard a woman behind him whisper to her companion, “That’s rich, considering her cousin Jerry is competing.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Glenda declared so casually that it was clear her recent royal status had gained her a penchant for being obeyed. “I, for one, have paid a lot to be a judge here and don’t intend to step down.”
“I suppose I could withdraw my entry,” Tami crossed her arms over her chest and called the pompous pair’s bluff.
“You’ll save me a bowl,” Glenda pouted. Someone pushed through the crowd to whisper in Mayor Pomfrey’s ear.
“Of course,” Tami replied. The murmur rippled back across the crowd like they were all doing the wave, gossip-style.
“Is that Tami Remmington? The Tami Remmington?” was what was going through the crowd even as Mayor Pomfrey was bending to his wife with bugged out eyes that turned into his wife’s nearly audible gulp.
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“I’d be willing to take my entry to the next cookoff,” Tami shrugged, Hex’s eyes giving an odd magical essence to Tami’s casual stance.
“If so, I’ll be sure to at least attend,” Glenda continued, her tone conversational even as both women were glaring at Mayor Pomfrey and his wife, who were now squirming. “I wonder if they’re looking for a judge.”
This was a serious problem for Mayor Pomfrey, who was going to lose the most famous eccentric chef his little town had ever known because his wife had not fully vetted the guest list. They’d gotten national coverage of his little town’s contest as soon as Glenda was announced as a judge. Joe could see a scenario unwind in the eyes of that AI Mayor actor and that was their impressive special effects department at work. Their audience was treated to a screen-in-screen effect that broadcast the mayor’s fears in technicolor. The scene consisted of news vans peeling into the cookoff parking lot any second, followed by newspaper headlines of Mayor Pomfrey losing the next election due to having kicked this huge celebrity to the next town over. That town’s mayor, a longtime nemesis of this town’s mayor, would smilingly merge their towns, take over, and run both this mayor and his wife out of town tarred and feathered.
“The entries are anonymous,” Mayor Pomfrey’s wife looked up to her husband with a forced smile, gulping back her previous statement like a distasteful bite of dog doo.
“Anyone having tasted Tami’s cooking would know it from anything else without any labels,” Glenda challenged their pathetic version of a retreat. “I’d know her signature from the best in the world, because it is the best in the world, but if you don’t let me judge it, I’ll withdraw with her. There is nothing in my contract about using me as a means for disqualifying good contestants so that some backwater can promote their own relatives over true talent.”
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“The best is the best, whether it is a local or a celebrity,” Mayor Pomfrey tried to backtrack from Glenda’s stare, his voice a bit quivery.
“I won’t have you penalizing me in favor of locals just because you need to make something fair,” Tami agreed with Glenda. “I assumed that my fame was clear on my application. I’m not sure I’m comfortable competing in a rigged competition. I’ll be judged on my cooking merits or nothing at all.”
It took an AI to make that sound reasonable. What followed was something that likely shocked everyone in the town and the next town over. It shocked Joe. Ms. Toovers, their target and a sponsor of the competition, stood like a beacon of sanity in the whispering crowd and strolled leisurely up to the stage. With a slightly smug gesture, she waved Mayor Pomfrey aside and took his place at the microphone.
“Don’t be silly,” Ms. Toovers tilted the microphone down to her slightly smaller height. What she lacked in height, she more than made up for in sheer presence. Between her retro Louboutin shoes and Louis Vuitton purse was a white Gucci suit that she obviously didn’t mind ruining with drippy BBQ sauce. Her lips matched the bottoms of her shoes and the one scarf accent that blew in the breeze unlike her cutting-edge hairstyle that stayed put. “If my head chef can compete, then surely, we won’t be turning away his only competition in years. As a sponsor and board member of the chamber of commerce, I approve of Ms. Remmington’s entry and trust someone as well-known as Princess Glenda to judge fairly. Just because I’ve supported Mayor Pomfrey’s campaign doesn’t mean his lovely wife grades my chef above her cousin. I, for one, welcome the competition.”
Silence stood in a pregnant moment between the three women at the center of the controversy, but it broke in the next as Mayor Pomfrey’s wife laughed and clapped her hands, followed by the echoing applause of the crowd. Tami’s entry was accepted. Glenda introduced Kodo to Ms. Toovers and Mayor Pomfrey’s wife, who actually giggled as Kodo returned her diamond watch like some stage magician. There was laughing and subtle challenges and such that could only exist in the language of southern women. Joe ducked. Joe crossed his legs and leaned back, watching the whole thing from his safe chair in the middle of a crowd that didn’t notice him at all for the commotion going on. This was exactly the kind of acting he liked.
Tami won, much to the chagrin of Ms. Toovers and her head chef, who invited them to an elite afterparty. They turned her down, which surprised Joe, but that turned out okay because Ms. Toovers ended up slumming it with the rest of them as they shared their food and spirits around the aftermath of the competition at the fair grounds. In the end even Ms. Toovers’ chef admitted that Tami had deserved to win. Jean laughed off Ms. Toovers’ attempts to replace her chef with Tami, telling her that she couldn’t afford her. Tami just smiled and passed Ms. Toover’s chef an extra jar of apple pie moonshine that would only take his chili and BBQ sauce one tiny step closer to hers.
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“I make all my own ingredients,” Tami gave the poor man a sympathetic pat on the arm. “From the moonshine to the Dijon mustard.”
“You bought the honey,” the chef accused Tami.
“It’s not like we could raise bees in the back of the Thunderbird,” Jean laughed, but Tam’s eyes got a scary speculative look.
“And I won’t tell you from where,” Tami teased him, having quickly come to the conclusion that she wouldn’t like the honey from truck stop bees anyway. The thought bubble told the story for the viewers just like it had for the mayor’s fears. Joe wasn’t watching the thought bubble, but rather wondering if he could coax Kodo into sharing that last cornbread muffin that Tami was slipping to him under the table. “That shall remain my secret, though I’m seriously considering trying bees from a pear orchard next time. Or peach.”
“May I taste the honey you used?” he cajoled, like a beggar orphan, his eyes sure that he could place it if allowed to taste it.
“You already did,” Tami shook her finger at him and handed him a shot glass of the moonshine instead. “On the cornbread.”
“There is a cruel streak in you, Ms. Remmington,” Ms. Toovers took the shot glass that the chef had refused in favor of chasing a ferret. It had been a horrible thing to say to the poor man, who then went in search of any crumb of cornbread he could find. Of course, the last muffin was quickly making its way into the puffy cheeks of a very spoiled ferret.
“I have standards,” Tami answered with a shrug. Joe gave a little chuckle from where he was still cleaning up the scraps from the kitchen. “That side of me doesn’t have a lot of patience for people who claim to be chefs and don’t have the same high standards for what they’ll put on a table. He’s good, but he relies too heavily on locally sourced food. I have the luxury of plucking up gems from everywhere we travel.”
They’d set up a little firepit and fed it most of what was left of their firewood, something else Ms. Toovers’ chef had inspected curiously. Tami had handed out a jar of the moonshine to everyone who had competed. The officials had taken down the tents and the park had become a bunch of dots of firepits surrounded by lawn chairs that were occupied by those who (if they’d lived in the real world) would wake to splitting headaches and very little knowledge of the previous night.
“How much of this moonshine do you have stored in the trunk of that Thunderbird?” Ms. Toovers said with raised eyebrows, clinking her shot glass to both Tami and Jean’s. Even having asked the question, she didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a good thing Mayor Pomfrey is telling law enforcement to look the other way about it.” And that statement was paired with the public service announcement at the bottom of their video feed that urged viewers to drink responsibly. Joe’s newest display system allowed him to see things like that too.
“I’m intense in the kitchen, but that ends when I leave the plates to the dishwashers,” Tami admitted, tossing back a shot. “I like a party as much as the next girl.”
“It has me thinking maybe I’m open to yet another wife,” Ms. Toovers flirted lightly, but half-heartedly.
“Aren’t you still supposed to be on your honeymoon with the last one?” Glenda challenged Ms. Toovers with a wicked smile.
“One should have as many wives as one can support, according to some biblical texts,” Ms. Toovers teased Glenda. “I would think you might be looking to expand as well.”
“I’m just off my own honeymoon,” Glenda admitted with a smile. “I don’t know how you do it. I’m more than content with one and if he had others, I think I’d have to kill them all to make sure he appreciated me.” The statement was truer than Ms. Toovers could know and Joe coughed a bit to cover his interpretation of it.
“I’ve had to cut my honeymoon short for this event,” Ms. Toovers admitted, with a conspiratorial wink. “But my Candy will be waiting for me once I’ve completed my rounds. I’ve left her in Monaco with a spending limit at the casinos that should keep her happy until I’ve done my duty with my other spouses. It is a duty I take very seriously.”
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Joe found Ms. Toovers chef going through their garbage even as he was emptying some crumbs into it. The man had the grace to look chagrinned, but he didn’t come up off his knees as he noticed a nibbling Kodo peek out from behind the shelves. Is there anything more sympathy-inducing than a poor man reduced to bargaining with a ferret for the last bite of cornbread. Joe had to give it to him, he was persistent. All for a taste of honey?
“Good help is so hard to find,” Ms. Toovers tipped her empty glass toward her chef as she noted Joe turning down his bribe of a stack of bills to get the cornbread from the ferret.
“He’d have had more luck bribing the ferret,” Tami joked. Joe was busy playing his role as dutiful assistant, leaning down into an ice bucket for a chilled white wine. “Joe is one of the good ones.”
“Thanks,” Joe told Tami sincerely, sliding a set of three wine glasses down from a shelf in the outdoor kitchen. It was the same wine that Tami had used for the Dijon mustard, but the chef didn’t need to know that. Joe poured out three glasses and handed them out to Jean, Tami, and Ms. Toovers.
“I have better luck with wives than employees,” Ms. Toovers complained. “I don’t suppose you’d lend me your Joe for a few days.”
“I’m pretty sure slavery was outlawed,” Joe muttered under his breath, but they ignored that for the most part. The spiders didn’t. Joe got another one-liner and gave himself a mental fist bump for it.
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“I wouldn’t dream of stealing him away from you, but someone loyal with a good sense of wit and circumstance is just what I’d need to make sure Candy’s apartment is set up nicely for her,” Ms. Toovers suggested, almost too casually. “It’s just that she’s coming home to the new place day after tomorrow and I’d like her to have some meals in the fridge and no surprises.”
“What do you think, Joe?” Jean turned to him, like this wasn’t the whole reason for their presence at this cookoff. Joe sent a silent thank you to Writer AIs since it would never have happened organically.
“It would be great if you could just do a few days of housesitting, so I know it’s all set up for her return,” Ms. Toovers warmed up to the idea. “You wouldn’t have to do much. Just make sure the fridge is stocked, she has some staples in the cupboards?”
“I could whip up a few meals,” Tami offered like he’d accepted already. “I’ll meet you there in the morning, cook up some stuff she could just warm up after her trip, but then we’d have to get on the road again.”
“It’s just two days,” Ms. Toovers got this speculative look on her face that made Joe think that he was walking into something hinky. Of course he was. He then cursed the same writers he’d blessed a moment before.
“Why not,” Joe answered them all as they ignored him, making plans.