Dark Tort (11 page)

“Oops,” I said.

“Yeah, oops,” Nora replied, her pretty face alight with an equal mixture of anger and humor. “Oops, guess what caterers got reported to their respective Better Business Bureaus?”

In the end, Nora had decided on stuffed Portobello mushrooms and empanadas with guacamole for appetizers. For the main course, she’d opted for beef tenderloin, that long, luscious piece of meat from which filets mignons were sliced. Hot beef in the middle of a cold October day was appropriately festive, I assured her. Served with feathery mashed potato puffs, a light salad, and steamed vegetables, the lunch would not be too heavy. And, I added with a smile, beef tenderloin was something a caterer simply could not fake.

As Nora and I had drunk cup after cup of spiced apple cider in her mammoth kitchen, I’d assured her that things would go well. I had a long list of references, which I handed to her. She’d been very jovial, waving her hand and saying she was easy to please. I’d smiled. But now I was more wary, as I wanted to keep Julian’s experience in the back of my mind.

I didn’t have time to ponder this issue, but I did need to make the Journey Cake. If the party did not go forward, I could serve it at Gus’s christening the following day. I drained my espresso cup and put it into the sink. Unfortunately, the first time I’d done a dry run of Nora’s, or rather, Charlie Baker’s Journey Cake recipe, it had flopped. It had fallen, sunk, collapsed. If you wanted a historic angle, you’d have to think of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

Once again, I edged over to the espresso maker. Too much caffeine, you drink too much caffeine, I heard my doctor saying. Tough tacks, I’d replied. And anyway, the machine felt like my anchor. “Or warm teddy bear,” Tom had joked.

Well, I needed a hug from my teddy bear, not only because of worry over how Arch and Julian were dealing with Dusty’s death, but also because I had something infinitely more banal to ponder: the plumbers and their work, or lack thereof, at the Roundhouse. I remembered an old joke we used to tell back in New Jersey. I’d always thought it came from The Tonight Show, but I wasn’t sure:

A doctor calls a plumber in the middle of the night because his toilet is running and keeping him awake. The plumber drives out and fixes the problem in about fifteen minutes. A week later, the doctor receives a bill for four hundred dollars. Enraged, he calls the plumber to complain. “I’m a doctor and I don’t even charge sixteen hundred bucks an hour!” And the plumber calmly replies, “I didn’t either when I was a doctor.”

I fixed myself a one-shot espresso, drank it down, and put in a call to Front Range Plumbing. As usual, I got their machine. I told them who I was and reminded them this Monday evening, that is, in three days, I had an event to cater at the Roundhouse. I needed the plumbing fixed. Please, I added, before hanging up.

Well, I consoled myself as I again rinsed a cup, if the guys laying the pipe were not done, we would have to hold the post-ribbon-cutting event for the new Mountain Pastoral Center in a small room at the Aspen Meadow Country Club. Luckily, a very foresighted Marla had booked it “just in case.”

“Hello, Goldy, are you in there?” Marla’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. “I’m dropping my Mercedes off for some work in a few minutes, and a repairman is driving me out to Creekside Spa. I’m supposed to be at the spa in half an hour. Do you want me to stay with you for a while longer, or not?”

“Yes, please stay.”

“Let me make us all some more coffee.” Tom was suddenly at my side. “Sit down, Goldy.”

“I don’t want any more caffeine, thanks.”

Tom lowered his voice. “Are you all right?”

I shrugged and didn’t mention the Journey Cake, the food for the christening and the ribbon-cutting receptions, the plumbing problems, or Dusty. Instead, I sat down at our kitchen table next to Julian, who looked disconsolate. Was he remembering a time he’d been with Dusty, to the movies, for a hike? Was he recalling what it was like to kiss her? I didn’t want to think about it.

Tom, all assurance, placed a pair of cups under the nozzles and pressed buttons. Rich ropes of espresso hissed out. Marla placed plump, bejeweled hands on Julian’s and my arms.

“You two should take some time off,” she advised.

I snorted; Julian looked out the window. Tom placed the cups in front of Marla and Julian, then raised an eyebrow in my direction.

“Miss G., Julian, Marla’s right.” He unhooked his cell phone from his belt. “Let me call Victim Assistance.”

I squealed, “Forget it!” with such ferocity that Tom put down his phone and patted my shoulder.

“Okay, Miss G.,” he murmured. “Whatever you want.”

“Goldy. Julian.” Marla’s voice was full of alarm. “Don’t cook today, please. Don’t even stay at home. Come with me to the spa. We can leave now and I’ll call them on the cell, book the two of you with the same package I’m getting. They take guys, Julian, no worries. You could each get a ninety-minute massage, oil and water treatment, full-body wrap—”

I cleared my throat. Did neither Tom nor Marla understand that they just weren’t helping? Julian gave me a knowing glance. Finally he stood up and clicked buttons on my kitchen computer. I squinted. He’d brought up my catering schedule and was pushing more buttons. My printer spat out recipes.

Oh yes, Julian, also in the food business, knew that cooking healed. The two of us could try the Journey Cake again. Creaming butter and sugar, sifting flour, and mixing, mixing, mixing: all these would help. Listening to Tom and Marla, on the other hand, was driving me nuts.

“All right, all right, I give up. My body will be done at half past two,” Marla said, her voice suddenly plaintive. “But my car won’t be done until five. I hate to bring this up, Goldy, but you promised to pick me up at the spa. Want me to get the repairman to come get me?”

“No, no, I’ll do it. It’ll help me get my mind off the fact that I promised Sally Routt I’d look into her daughter’s death.”

I was escorting her to the front door, but she stopped in the hallway so she could point a crimson-painted nail at my face.

“You’re nuts. You also look like hell. Don’t go anywhere without me. I mean, after you pick me up.”

I smiled. “So does that mean you’re willing to come down to Christian Brothers High School with me to pick up Arch?”

An unexpected cloud passed over Marla’s features. She mumbled, “You’re not taking him for another driving lesson, are you?”

“C’mon, girlfriend. I am, after all, a very good teacher.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “That and the fact that Arch asked if he could try out my Mercedes.”

“Oh yes? Let’s see, your new car’s at least five months old. I mean, it already needs work. If you let Arch drive it sometime, well, who knows—”

The bejeweled fingers flashed in front of my eyes. “I know you’re kidding, so don’t even finish that thought.” With a mumbled farewell, she flounced out.

When I came back into the kitchen, Tom was arranging slices of goat cheese and cooked beets on salads of mixed field greens. Julian was concentrating on measuring out ingredients for a vinaigrette.

“C’mere, Miss G.” Tom motioned me forward, and I walked into his arms. “I’m in this crime-fighting business. I know you never get used to . . . what you saw last night.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” My voice next to his shoulder was muffled. I shuddered, and he pulled me in tighter. “She was just so ...so—”

“I know. Young. Unfinished. Hopeful.”

“Right.” I pulled away from Tom. “I need to make a call.”

“Goldy,” Tom said, “take it easy for a while, will you?”

“Just one call,” I replied, thinking of Sally’s plea that I help her find out what had happened to her daughter. I snagged the phone and my purse and slipped into the living room. There, I took out my little handheld and looked up the home number of Wink Calhoun, receptionist at H&J. I tapped in the numbers, without knowing what I was going to say. Wink was, had been, Dusty’s closest friend at the firm. But Wink and I were also chums of a kind, since she had adopted Latte, a basset hound we had inherited from a friend.

Wink answered on the first ring. I could hear Latte howling in the background. “Hello?” As usual, Wink’s Southern drawl was more pronounced when she was upset. “Goldy? I have caller ID,” she explained, her voice cracking. “What happened to Dusty? The police have been here, and Richard is on his way over . . . Latte! Stop howling, please!”

The dog ignored her.

“Oh, Wink,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I know how close you and Dusty were—”

“I’m in hail.” Hell. Yeah; me, too. Her voice turned pleading. “Why would someone do this?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to come over to our place? I have to go out for a while, but my husband, Tom, and our family friend Julian Teller are here. I . . . just thought you might not want to be alone.”

“I can’t.” Caint. “King Richard is bringing over some work for me to do here at my house. The cops won’t let us back into . . . back into . . .” She started crying again, then clearly made a huge effort to stop. “I’d like to see you.”

“You want to come to our house later?” I asked. “Say for dinner?”

Another sob. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling so good. I want to know why someone did this. Can’t you help the cops? Haven’t you done that before? What if somebody gets away with this crime?”

“I’m trying, Wink. Look, come over to our house when you finish your work, okay? Julian Teller will be here and can let you in.”

“Well, maybe.”

“You know how you were talking about my helping with the case, Wink?” When she mmm-hmmed, I made my voice firm. “I was hoping you could write down everything Dusty was working on.”

“I don’t know that stuff. That’s why they had her doing it.”

My stomach was growling, I was exhausted, and Wink was being Wink.

“Well, if you can think of anything, anything at all, we could go over it later.” That was about as far as I was going to get in one phone call, I reasoned. People want you to figure something out, but when you ask them to do some work in helping with the figuring, they get schizzy. We signed off.

“Hey,” I said, surveying the kitchen table, which Tom had carefully set with three place settings. “I just realized I’m starving.”

Tom beamed. Soon he and Julian and I were tucking into beds of crunchy greens, whose accents of sweet, crunchy fall beets and creamy, tart cheese were perfectly complemented by Tom’s sharp balsamic vinaigrette and the soft rolls he’d heated—with a pat of butter melting inside each one.

“So who were you on the phone with?” Julian asked, once we were washing the dishes.

“Wink Calhoun. Remember she took Latte off our hands when Scout kept attacking him?” Julian and Tom nodded, their faces grim. Our adopted cat had not taken well to the new, ultrafriendly basset hound, and had used his claws to show it. “She’s the receptionist at Hanrahan and Jule. Anyway, I invited her over here for dinner, hope that’s okay. She might be willing to talk to us about her best friend at that law firm, Dusty Routt.”

Tom’s cell rang and he moved into the hallway. When he came back, he asked if Julian would be staying at the house to cook. When Julian replied that he was, Tom said he was going down to the department. Before leaving, he gave me another hug and told me to call him if anything, anything at all, came up. I promised I would, and he took off.

Julian placed the printed-out recipes for Donald Ellis’s birthday party in a neat pile on the counter. “Where do you want to start?”

“Worst first,” I replied.

So. With the index card that Nora Ellis had given me for her hus-band’s birthday cake laid on the counter, Julian and I began placing the ingredients on our workspace: unsalted butter, apple cider, flour, spices.

“What, no eggs? Why isn’t there a real recipe?” Julian wondered aloud. “Are you just supposed to add things in order without a thought as to how they’re incorporated?” He stopped measuring sugar and stared at the list of ingredients. “This recipe doesn’t look right.”

I sighed, placed the butter in the mixer, and flipped the switch. “I know. The folks coming across the country in covered wagons didn’t have all our ingredients, and I know most recipes for Journey Cake don’t have eggs. But I’ve tasted Journey Cake, and it’s good. So you’re right. Something is wrong with Nora’s recipe, or rather, Charlie Baker’s recipe—”

“But Charlie Baker was a great cook,” Julian interjected. “I know he just listed ingredients on his paintings, but everything I’ve made from them has been great.”

“Ditto. Maybe I messed this thing up when I made it the first time. Plus, the recipe needs to be doubled to make enough for the party. My proportions could have been off.”

Julian stared at the mixer blades cutting swathes through the butter. “Are you sure this was one of Charlie’s recipes? Nora Ellis sure doesn’t cook, and she proudly informed me that her mother grew up with a cast of thousands. Thousands of servants, that is.”

“The cake is related to her present for Donald.” I picked up the wax paper cradling the sugar and allowed it to snow into the butter. “She’s giving him a painting by Charlie Baker. It was one of the last ones he did before he died. He gave it the name Cake Series II.”

Julian whistled. “That must have set her back a bit. Last I heard, Charlie’s paintings of food, with the ingredients lettered underneath, were worth fifty thousand each. And up. That’s a lot of cakes.”