Pinewood Corner Kitchen Chapter 7
The next morning, Gabriella set up shop in the pink bedroom with a laptop and started researching the Chapmans. Their website, also named Pinewood Corner Kitchen, was enormous, containing an intimidating amount of recipes. Each had a story to go with it. Nothing too long, but a little while of reading gave her some insight into their approach. That “hip professor” impression she’d gotten was right. The entire vibe of the site was brilliant and eccentric, but just approachable enough that it made you want to keep going back. Aspirational in a way that you might think you’d be able to achieve yourself, though probably not if you were being honest. Even Gabriella, who could not stand them as people, found herself clicking through to interesting recipes a few too many times for what she was supposed to be focusing on.
They also had a healthy social media presence, though that was less interesting. The videos were polished, informative, and entertaining. They’d obviously hired someone to run it for them because everything was carefully curated to make the Chapmans seem approachable and friendly, but there was a distance there. It wasn’t nearly as entertaining as their website.
After a little while, she pulled herself away from the Chapmans to start researching what others had to say about them. There was plenty out there, most of it fawning or, at the very least, complimentary. A few mentions of intense behavior, but nothing out of the realm of possibility for two people who were famous and successful.
Then she found the first interesting point, buried in the comments of a YouTube video.
Talk about the psychic thing
This was from three years earlier, so it couldn’t be the psychic attacks. According to the Chapmans, those had started two years ago. After another forty minutes of research, she found two more mentions of the Chapmans and psychic abilities together: one in another comment, another in the description of an entrepreneur podcast episode. Glancing at the time, Gabriella realized she had about an hour and a half until the next staff meeting. She’d wanted to get a quick run in, but she’d completely lost track of time. But if she listened to this on the treadmill, she could squeeze it in.
Hoping this wasn’t nothing, she got ready for her workout and made her way downstairs. The gym was empty as she came in, so Gabriella took a minute to get the podcast going before she started stretching.
“Hey folks, welcome to the Spirit Entrepreneur podcast, the podcast for the entrepreneur who’s just a little out of this world,” a smooth male voice said in her headphones. “Today we’ve got a hell of a guest with us. Entrepreneur, chef, and food writer, Steve Chapman!”
After about thirty minutes of listening to Steve Chapman describe the ways he, his wife, and their large amounts of money had built a successful empire, Gabriella was getting the creeping feeling she’d wasted her time on this. But then the host spoke.
“There’s a weird question in here,” he said. “Something a little out of this world, as it were. And judging by your face right now, I think you know what it is. Which is fitting.”
“I sure do,” Steve Chapman said cheerfully. “But how about you read it anyway.”
“Mary in Des Moines wants to know how your psychic abilities have influenced your career.”
Gabriella almost tripped on the treadmill, glancing up to see that the door had opened and Amelia was coming in. Amelia looked at her curiously and Gabriella waved her off.
In her headphones, Steve laughed. “Oh, my abilities,” he said. “No, it’s our abilities. Jan has her talents too. And maybe we’ve used them, but only in the past. And only to play a system that’s already unfair. If we don’t know what’s happening in the algorithms that rule our online life, then how can we possibly fight against them? So if we happened to use our natural talents to give our content a nudge, is that really wrong? I’ve heard the whispers too, folks. But tell me honestly, if you had these abilities, wouldn’t you do the same thing?”
They moved on to the next question as though that wasn’t an earth-shattering revelation. Gabriella pulled off her headphones just as Amelia was getting on the exercise bike nearby. “The Chapmans are psychic,” she said.
“Who?”
“The, um, chef people. The annoying couple who are being attacked by a psychic? They’re psychic too.”
Amelia laughed and shook her head as she started pedaling. “There’s always something,” she said.
***
The Chapman case was the first thing on the agenda at the meeting. Graham was off today, so it was up to Gabriella to give the updates. She told them all about the case, the NDA, her interview with Casey Romano, and finally the revelation that the victims had these abilities as well.
“He didn’t go into detail about what he and his wife can do,” Gabriella said finally, as James listened intently from a computer chair pulled far away from the empty space where he’d thrown the computer to the floor under Adele’s influence several months ago.
“It’s interesting,” he said. “But it isn’t necessarily a factor.”
“I know,” she said, doing her best to avoid sounding snappish as she did so. “But they didn’t mention it to me or Graham, despite having discussed it in public before and despite an otherwise thorough interview. And it just strikes me as weird that when the topic is psychic abilities, they would keep it quiet.”
“Yeah,” he conceded.
“Though the guy I talked to yesterday, Casey Romano, he was saying how there’s all different types and strengths and all that. So it could be a coincidence, but it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“He’s the one they’re blaming, right?” James asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. “Though I have to be honest, I have strong doubts.”
“Why?”
“So I looked into him yesterday too,” she said, turning to that page in her research notes. “He’s thirty-five, opened his food truck about three years ago, and has gotten really good press. Which is not surprising, it smelled really good when I was there. What I could find was pretty normal. He’s twice-divorced with an eighteen-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. The son has congenital lung problems and Casey does fundraisers at the truck for both his treatment and for related charities. He’s from Worcester and has lived there most of his life. Um, he’s somewhat open about his own psychic abilities. He actually talked to me about them. He’s bad at physical stuff, but great at communicating with spirits and reading people. Like, I know that we communicate with spirits through ouija boards and different techniques, but they apparently just walk up to him and start talking. He told me there’s a lot of different ways psychic abilities can manifest and those are his.”
“I don’t know much about it,” James admitted.
At his computer, Bradley was silently looking at his screen. Gabriella couldn’t blame him, she was pretty sure everyone in the room was thinking the same thing she was. “Bradley-” James started.
“I don’t know anything about it,” he said, his voice brittle.
“Fine,” James said. “It’s fine. Not what I was about to ask.”
“I might ask them about it,” Gabriella said, before the two of them could start arguing. “I’ll talk to Graham first, though.”
“That’s fine,” James said, glancing over at Amelia, as though looking for confirmation that this was the right choice. “If you think they’d be receptive to it.”
“I don’t know if they’d actually be receptive to anything,” she said. “But I just feel like it is an essential factor. I wonder if this is what they’d want to tell us with the NDA.”
“And that’s what I was going to ask about,” James said.
“If they’re talking about it on podcasts, I doubt it,” Bradley said. “It’s probably them trying to be different. Advertise that you’re psychic and you have amazing magical insights into cooking or whatever.”
For someone with such obvious psychic abilities, the amount of skepticism he had was almost alarming. “He was talking about it in such a matter-of-fact way, though,” Gabriella said. “About how they used some tricks in the past, but not anymore.”
“He’s a salesman,” Bradley said. “And that was a what, an entrepreneur show? Of course he’s just throwing it out there like it’s nothing, he’s trying to connect with them so they’ll buy from him.”
“I know how advertising works,” Gabriella muttered. “Either way, I’ll talk to Graham and make a plan.”
