Free Dying for a Taste by Leslie Karst Page A

have taken anything of interest away—especially a computer. And her cell phone, too.
    I got up from the chair and went to the window. You could see down into the neighbor’s backyard, which was full of fruit trees with white and pale-pink flowers, a shaggy lawn, and an unkempt flower garden in full bloom. Aunt Letta must have enjoyed this view.
    I’d been in her office on numerous occasions but had never paid a lot of attention to its contents. I leaned over to examine a photo that hung next to the window and was surprised to see that it was of our family, taken at Salvatore’s ninetieth birthday party shortly before he died. There was my grandfather in a silly paper hat, his arm around Giovanna, with my mom and dad and me on one side and Aunt Letta, in loose batik pants and a silky blouse, on the other. It was taken in Nonno and Nonna’s backyard; you could see their espaliered pear tree hugging the brick wall in the background.
    Tucked into the corner of the frame was a small snapshot of Letta and Tony that looked like it had been taken at a park up in the redwoods. They were sitting at a picnic table spread with a red-and-white tablecloth and covered with food: a wedge of cheese, a round loaf of bread, some red grapes, and a few oranges. Someone else’s arm protruded into the picture, partially obscuring Letta’s lower body.
    I moved on to the next picture on the wall: a print of a Gauguin painting of two women in skirts—but nothing else—one holding a slice of watermelon, the other a sprig ofpink flowers. I’m generally not much of a fan of what I believe is called “primitive” art, but I have to say I quite like that painting: a sort of mix of Polynesian, Impressionist, and old-school “classical” styles.
    The only other thing in the room was a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. I stopped before it and gazed at the titles, a good 90 percent of which appeared to be about cooking. There were food essayists, such as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin and Ruth Reichl, and biographies of people like Julia Child and Auguste Escoffier. And lots of cookbooks. I bent over to read some of the titles: Sam Choy’s Polynesian Kitchen , Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook , Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery , Jacques Pépin’s La Methode , Ruth Kallenbach’s Cooking at Escarole .
    I pulled this last one out. I’d never been to Escarole, the San Francisco restaurant started by the now-famous Ruth Kallenbach after she left Chez Panisse. But I’d always wanted to try it, especially since I knew she’d taken Letta with her to become sous-chef for the new restaurant. Eric and I had long talked about going up to the City to see an opera and eating at Escarole beforehand, even though Letta had long since left the place, but we had never managed to do so.
    As I opened the book to flip through the recipes, two envelopes and a small photograph slipped out and fell to the floor. I stooped to pick them up.
    The photo was of a woman with short, blond hair, who looked to be in her thirties. She was standing in front of a two-story wood-shingled house, wearing jeans and a green-and-white button-down shirt, and laughing at whoever held the camera, her eyes squinting into the sun. It was an oldphoto—from the 1970s or 1980s, I guessed from the faded colors and the pinkish tint. I set it aside and picked up the envelopes.
    Both were addressed to Letta, care of Gauguin. Neither had a return address, but the postmarks, which were dated November of last year and March of this one, said San Francisco. Sitting back down, I slid the paper out of the earlier dated of the two, unfolded the sheet, and smoothed it out on the desk. It was a short, printed letter written by someone overly fond of boldface, italics, and exclamation marks:
    Traitor!
    You of ALL people should know better! Factory-farmed chicken? CAFO beef? Veal?! Not to mention farmed salmon and imported shrimp? Didn’t you learn anything during all those years in Berkeley and