Dread on Arrival (20 page)

Quill was happier than ever about her day spent in the park. “I’m glad I missed all that. So who’s going to whip up the cream?”

Clare held up her hand and counted off on her fingers: “Skipper Bryant, Andrea Bryant, Jukka Angstrom, that walking advertisement for Victoria’s Secret … you know, the blonde with the big boobs.”

“Melanie Myers?”

“Right. And then Rose Ellen, Josephine Barcini, and Mrs. Barcini. One for each of the food processors. Harvey’s going to pinch-hit. He’s the only one who is neutral.”

“How’d it go today with the prep? Did the practice recipes taste okay?”

Raleigh snorted. “The Brunswick stew’s a joke. Fatty, overcooked, no subtlety of flavor at all.”

“It’s supposed to be fatty and unsubtle,” Clare said. “It tasted delicious, if you want to know the truth. And actually, the amateur cooks practiced whipping up zabaglione all day and they weren’t too bad.” She sighed. “I just wish this was all over. I want my kitchen back.”

Meg patted her on the shoulder. “An hour or two, at most. Then we can all go home and have a nice bottle of wine. Or maybe two.”

Somebody clapped their hands with the imperial smacks of a gym teacher calling students to order: “People! People!” Harvey emerged from the director’s office and clapped his hands again. “People! Pay attention, please!”

“My Lord,” Meg said. “What the heck happened to him?”

“The chance to be on national TV,” Quill said. “Oh, dear.”

Harvey’s well-cut sports coats, Brooks Brothers long-sleeved shirts, and Countess Mara ties had been replaced by a look Quill could best describe as Producer Gothic. His blond hair was clipped short. Sunglasses perched on his head. A small gold ring was in his left ear. A day’s worth of beard stubbled his chin. He wore black jeans, tennis shoes, and a slouchy sports jacket. He took the sports jacket off and slung it over his shoulders, revealing a tight black turtleneck and a very nice set of muscles.

“My goodness,” Raleigh said. “I never knew the guy was built like that.”

“He’s a regular at the Y,” Meg said.

Harvey flung his arms out and addressed the camera grip. He snapped his fingers. “Mic?”

The grip hustled over and attached a clip microphone to his turtleneck.

“Testing, testing!” Harvey’s voice boomed around the room. The tech at the monitor clapped his hands to his earphone, held up one finger, and fiddled with the monitor. Then he shot his forefinger forward.”

“Testing,” Harvey said. “There. That’s better. Now. Is everyone in the audience ready for … the Slap Down?!”

The grip held up a sign that read applause. A scattering of handclaps followed.

“People! I said are you ready for the
Slap Down
!”

The applause increased. Followed by a few whistles.

“Slap. Down!”

The grip put his fingers to his lips and whistled sharply. The tech rattled a large cooking whisk against the metal monitor cart.

Harvey moved across the floor like a dancer, swinging his arms.
“Slap. Down. Slap Down!”

A thunder of shouts, yells, and catcalls followed him.

“Are you ready for this? Are you ready for this?! Men! Ladies! A joint production of
Your Ancestor’s Attic
and
Pawn-o-Rama
brings you … Dr. Edmund Tree and Mr. Belter Barcini!”

Edmund and Belter came out of the office and jogged to the prep tables in the center of the room. The applause was tremendous.

“Cut,” the tech said. “Let’s do it again.”

Quill sat back in her chair and sighed.

“Nuts,” Meg said several hours later. “I should have brought something to read.”

It had turned into a very long night. Dina played solitaire on her laptop. Clare and Raleigh had dug up a deck of cards and played gin rummy. Quill herself was in a half doze when Meg reached over and nudged her. “They’re getting to actually serve stuff in a minute, so we’ll have to do our judging thing. Are you ready?”

Quill rubbed her face briskly with both hands. Edmund sat at one end of the stage prep table, legs crossed. He looked amused. Belter leaned forward at the other end, brawny arms extended, intent on the action at the stove. Pietro Giancava (scowling) and Jim Chen (exasperated) stood with some of the Bonne Goutè waitstaff. All of them held large trays filled with small plastic glasses and small plastic spoons.

“The serving’s going to be the messy part,” Clare observed. “The waitstaff has to hand the samples down the rows to the audience. We’ll be mopping up eggs and stew for weeks. Edmund ordered a tray of punch to go round, too. He says people are going to need to clear their palates.”

Meg groaned and rubbed her eyes. “I can’t stand much more of this.”

“Pietro doesn’t look too happy,” Quill said. “Neither does Jim.”

“Pietro’s furious he wasn’t asked to be one of the whips. Jim’s just disgusted. This isn’t cooking. It’s, it’s … I don’t know what it is. A three-ring circus. I wish I’d never agreed to this.”

“It’ll be over soon,” Quill said.

Jukka, Skipper, Andrea, Melanie, Josephine, and Mrs. Barcini stood at the stove, whisks at the ready. Rose Ellen had a long white apron wrapped elegantly around her slender figure. Harvey’s TV host grin was a little rigid by now, but he stood next to Rose Ellen, his hands on his hips and his eyes on the tech at the monitor.

The tech nodded.

Harvey’s voice was slightly hoarse. “Now folks, we’re going to bring the cameras over here so we can catch the action as our guest chefs whip Edmund’s dessert into shape. We’ll take a short break, so that we can dish it out, and then I hope you’ll all be ready to vote.” He took a breath, waited for the tech to countdown from five, and said excitedly, “We’ve been waiting for this, folks! Edmund—you’ve seen Belter sauté and chop. Are you ready to whip?!”

Edmund was. He stood up, gave the camera a superior kind of smile and poured the egg yolks into the chafing dish. Behind him, the assembled amateur chefs punched the blenders into action. It was fascinating, in a weird kind of way, and it was all over pretty quickly. Edmund whipped the eggs in a very professional-looking way. The crew at the stove flipped on the food processors, then poured the eggy results into the sauté pans and whipped away.

Edmund gave his eggs one final whip and held up his dish of zabaglione with a graceful flip of his wrist. He offered it to Belter, who hunched over the chafing dish for a long moment, then looked up and blew a loud raspberry.

“Cut!” the tech said, unperturbed. “Okay—get the samples out here, please.”

The waiters sprang into action and ladled stew and cream into the cups with astonishing rapidity. The punch was passed around. The audience was served.

“Take it from the top, Mr. Tree,” the tech said. “Offer the pudding …”

“It’s a cream,” Edmund snapped.

“Whatever. Anyhow, offer it to Barcini. Take a taste yourself. Then you’re going to sample a little of each of the pud—creams your amateurs chefs prepared, right? We’re going to do this in one take, because it’s been a long night and we’re all getting freakin’ tired.”

Edmund offered the cream to Barcini, who declined with another even louder raspberry. He sampled his own pudding, frowned, and added the Marsala and whipped it again. He sampled the cream and smiled triumphantly into the camera. The camera followed him as he tested each of the creams from each of his amateur chefs in turn.

Edmund stopped a passing waiter and took a cup of punch and drank it down.

Then he died.

Horribly.

He stiffened, suddenly, as though something large and awful had grabbed the back of his neck. He clutched at his throat and gasped for air with great, whooping screams of effort. Foam bubbled from the corners of his lips. He went into another spasm and then another.

By the time Quill was on her feet, he lay contorted on the floor, his body curved in a final throe that looked like a question mark. She couldn’t make herself heard through the shouts and the screaming. Rose Ellen was on the floor in a faint. Jukka knelt by her side. Melanie was in hysterics. Belter’s mouth was wide open in astonishment. Mrs. Barcini tapped her wire whisk against her teeth and looked interested.

“The punch!” Quill shouted. She did her best to make her way through the mob. “Don’t throw out the punch!”

The grip kept the cameras rolling. The tech sat at the monitor his mouth agape. Most of the audience crowded around the doors to the hallway, struggling against the tide of people trying to get in.

Everyone stayed clear of the body.

“The punch!” Quill shouted again. “Don’t touch it!” She felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket, and took it out with the feeling that all of this was unreal, but that she’d known something was going to happen. She’d known it from the beginning.

She looked at the screen.

Myles.

She held her phone to her ear. “Not the punch, Quill. The zabaglione. Make sure that no one throws out Edmund’s zabaglione.”

13

∼Bonne Goutè’s∼
Between-Course Punch
Clears the palate of 8 diners

6 cups grapefruit pureeJuice of 1 lemon1½ teaspoons grated gingerDash of grenadineCombine puree, lemon, ginger, and grenadine in a bowl. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Place in a glass thirteen-by-eleven pan and put in freezer until mixture is slushy, about one hour. Divide into cups and serve with mint leaves.GRAPEFRUIT PUREE:2⁄3 cup fine sugarZest of 2 well-scrubbed grapefruits8 grapefruits, peeled and sectionedPlace sugar in blender and puree with zest. Add the grapefruit sections and puree until the texture of oatmeal. “You’re sure Myles wants all that pudding sent to forensics?” Davy Kiddermeister asked.

“It’s a cream, an Italian cream,” Quill said automatically. “And yes, he does. Everything Edmund tasted. All of it. If he tried the Brunswick stew, you’ll have to test that.”

“He didn’t eat any stew,” Davy said. “I checked.”

They were seated in Quill’s office. The late morning sunshine spilled through the window, illuminating the patterns on the Oriental carpet. Quill was as tired as she’d ever been in her entire life. “He said to put it in separate batches. Labeled with who made which batch. You did do that last night, didn’t you?” Quill said anxiously.

“In a manner of speaking. We kept the pots in the same places on the stove. Two of them tipped over, you know. There’s pudding all over the floor. Stew, too.”

“I know.” Clare’s kitchen was a mess. It looked like a riot had been staged there. Actually, Quill thought, there
had
been a riot staged there.

Davy brightened. “We’ve got Dina’s digital tape of the whole thing plus the footage from the shoot. I haven’t had a chance to go through it yet. I can’t believe we got the whole murder on tape. So if anybody switched the pots’ positions, it might have been recorded.”

“Dina doesn’t have much. She jumped up when the rest of us did and forgot all about the laptop.”

“We’ll see,” Davy said optimistically. “She got a good record of Tree drinking the punch. Myles wants the punch sent to forensics, too, you said.”

“I was the one who told you to save the punch. It’s because strychnine …”

“We don’t know that it was strychnine.”

“I’ll bet you one of Meg’s meals it was.”

Davy scratched the back of his neck with his pen. “The ME tends to agree with you. Provisionally, of course.”

“Anyhow, strychnine isn’t necessarily instantaneous. If you’ve had a meal beforehand it can take up to twenty minutes to take effect in your system.”

“How do you know all that? Oh. There was that newspaper guy that bought it here, years ago.”

“His sister,” Quill said. “And I learned more about strychnine poisoning then than I ever wanted to.” She ran her hands through her hair, and then re-knotted it on the top of her head.

“Any idea where the perp got hold of it? If it is strychnine?”

“I have a very good idea. Rose Ellen Whitman cleans and restores paintings on the second floor of Elegant Antiques. Strychnine compounds are used in cleaning old oils sometimes. You need to check that out.”

“The widow, huh?” Davy smiled a little and made a note.

“They were to be married soon. And yes, we all know that murders are usually committed by a close relative, but she isn’t a relative yet. She never will be, given the circumstances.” Quill shivered. Dina had brought coffee and scones in on a tray. She’d had two cups of coffee already, but wasn’t able to touch the scones. Davy had eaten three. She waved the coffeepot in Davy’s direction and refilled his cup when he nodded yes. “I don’t think finding the murderer is going to be that easy. Maybe the burglar was the murderer and stole the stuff from her inventory. Which opens the suspect field way up. Anybody can wander through that shop and does. Maybe you can charge her with keeping a poisonous substance on hand without due regard for security or whatever, but I doubt you can charge her with murder.”

“You know, strychnine compounds are still used in a lot of products found on farms hereabouts,” Davy said. He made another note. There were dark circles under his eyes and his skin was pallid. “I don’t even know why I’m writing this down. We don’t even know what killed him.”