Hot Dish Heaven: A Murder Mystery With Recipes (7 page)

Barbie polished off her first bar. “One of my best friends is a retired member of Congress. He lives down the road and splits his time between practicing law and managing his family’s hog farm. When some other friends got married last spring, he not only drew up their prenup, he slaughtered and roasted the pig for the wedding reception. These people are multi-faceted. Shit, they have to be because there’s so few of them.”

I mentioned I’d met the local banker, who, I understood, also managed the VFW.

“And he makes a mean margarita,” Barbie replied. “But then again, don’t all bankers?”

With a laugh, she started in on her second bar, while I sipped lemonade and mulled over how someone like Barbie, discernibly intelligent and talented and undeniably full of spirit, could cope in this environment. She called it serene, but it
was
desolate. The closest Starbucks, Target, and movie theater were sixty miles away. How did she do it? I had to find out.

“Barbie, although the people here seem really nice, I can’t help but ask how on earth …” That didn’t come out right. “It’s just that these towns are so small …” Still not right. I didn’t want to offend her again. “Barbie, don’t you miss … um … well, don’t you miss the concerts, the plays, the intellectual stimulation of city life?”

She frantically waved her hands, as if erasing my concerns. “Like I said, we’re not trapped here. And when we lived in Minneapolis, we didn’t do much anyway.” She rested her elbows on the table and pressed her fingertips together. Her nails were short and painted a brilliant red. “Of course we always threatened to ‘trip the light fantastic.’” She emphasized the phrase with air quotes. “But when we were younger, we didn’t have the money, and when we got older, we didn’t have the energy. Hell, most nights we were too tired for sex. I swear I got pregnant the last two times only because of our mattress. It sagged in the middle, and we regularly ended up on top of each other whether we wanted to be or not.” She raised her eyes to the heavens like an innocent cherub, but I doubted there was anything innocent about her.

“Tell me.” I truly wanted to have a serious discussion. “What changed when you moved back here?”

“Well, first off, we got a new mattress.” So much for serious. “And second, I came to realize that the Twin Cities didn’t have the market cornered on intellectual discourse. Some of the debates around my neighbor’s campfire in Hallock are downright eye opening.” She stuck her nose in the air and fluttered her eyelashes with exaggeration. “And if it’s culture you want, my husband and Margie’s niece direct some of the finest school musicals you’ll ever see.”

I raised my hands. “I give up! I don’t know what I was thinking. Clearly this place is a cultural Mecca, full of Renaissance people.”

“Precisely, so why do you live in the Cities?”

“Huh?” The question threw me. “I guess because that’s where I landed a job.”

“So you’re there by default?”

“Default? I’m not sure I’d say—”

“Besides your job, why’d you move there? Family? Friends? True love?”

“Hardly.” Her words reverberated in my head. Did I really live in Minneapolis by “default”? That sounded terrible, as if I were taking the path of least resistance, letting life happen to me rather than designing it myself. I wasn’t doing that, was I?

“Damn, girl,” she went on to holler, “you should move here!”

“What?”

She reached out and grabbed my wrists. “Move here!” She pleaded in mock desperation. “You’ve got no stake in Minneapolis. And you could make a difference up here.”

“What would I do?”

She let go of my arms and wiggled her fingers as if typing. “Write! Work for me. I could use the help. The woman who covers sports for me now pens romance novels on the side.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I end up with articles about boys’ basketball with lines like, ‘His body glistened with the sweat of desire as his throbbing loins pressed against the man he was guarding.’”

I snickered, but before I could speak, she was on to a new subject. “Do you own a home?”

“Huh?” I needed to think faster to keep up. “No, and I probably never will. You may not remember, but journalists in the Twin Cities get paid crap.”

“Well, up here you can get a house for free.”

“Really?”

“Nah, I’m just shittin’ you. But you can buy one for less than the cost of a new car.” She stopped to let that tidbit of information sink in. “I know someone who recently bought a cute, two-bedroom, one-bath, for under $25,000.” She leaned across the table and whispered, “You may find this hard to believe, but there’s not a big demand for housing in these parts.”

As she sat back, she lifted the glasses from her ample chest and peered through the retro, cat-eye lenses to read the time on her Betty Boop watch. “Oh, hell, I’ve gotta go. I have a paper to put to bed.” She shimmied seductively before sliding from the booth, and I followed suit, except for the shimmying seductively part.

Standing, she extended her hand. “It was great to meet you, and if you get a chance, say hello to Stan for me.”

Without taking a breath, she hollered toward the kitchen. “Hey, Margie, I tried.” Then to me, she said by way of explanation, “I’m always after people to move up here. I don’t want these little towns to die.” She paused. “Did I mention we have a lot of rich, single, farmers?”

While shaking my head, pretending exasperation, I realized just how tired I truly was. “Do you make that same sale’s pitch to every visitor?” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they sounded petty. I had no desire to live in Kennedy, so I wasn’t sure why it irritated me that Barbie had asked others to make the move, but it did, though I wasn’t proud of it. “Sorry. I think my long drive has caught up to me. I’m pooped, and I’m getting crabby.”

“Well, I meant it. If you ever need a change of pace, I could use the help. I’m not as young as I look.” She fluttered her lashes. “I should start training someone to take over for me.”

She peeled a few dollar bills from the pocket of her tight, denim capris and tossed them on the table.

“But why me? You don’t even know if I can write.”

From another pocket, she retrieved a business card and placed it in my hand, folding my fingers over it. “Honestly? Because you’re here. Besides, you wouldn’t be working where you’re working if you couldn’t write.” She winked. “And you’d be surprised what I know about you.”

That baffled me, but I was too worn out to engage in more banter.

“Now,” she added, “I have to skedaddle. I need to get back to my office and finish an article about wind farms. Some locals want one built here.”

I tucked my hair behind my ears. “A reasonable request if this afternoon’s breeze was any indication.”

“Yeah, it clips along like that most days. There’s nothing to slow it down. No trees. No hills.” She gently patted the wine-colored spikes on top of her head. “Before I moved back, my hair would actually lie flat.”

Shifting gears yet again, she hollered, “Hey, Margie, I left you some money on the table.”

“Okay, kiddo. Ya comin’ back later?”

“Only if I get my work done.” Eyeing me, she said in a voice still loud enough for Margie to hear, “It sure would be nice if I had someone to help me.”

Margie chuckled knowingly as Barbie wrapped the remainder of her pumpkin square in her napkin and started for the door, her flip-flops snapping against the bottoms of her feet.

When just about there, she twirled back around. “Oh, damn, I almost forgot, I have to finish a story about a meth-lab bust too. I’ll need more nourishment.”

“You have a lot of those?”

“Nah,” she answered, hurrying to the counter. “We don’t have much crime of any kind.”

The murder immediately came to mind. “What about Samantha Berg?”

Barbie’s eyes practically bugged out of her head before she recovered enough to say, “That really didn’t amount to much.”

“But the FBI was called in.”

“And no one was arrested.” Trying hard to act nonchalant, she exaggerated her perusal of the bar selection.

“Which means the murderer is still around, right?”

“Not necessarily.” She ended up picking out two more pumpkin squares and adding them to her napkin.

“Huh?” The door to my brain slowly opened to another possibility. “Do you think Samantha Berg was killed by someone just passing through? Is that what you’re saying?”

Barbie drew back her shoulders and lifted her chin. “I’m saying the matter’s closed. I’m saying it’s not worth discussing.”

She was miffed with me again. “Sorry. I only asked because—”

“Listen, Samantha caused a lot of people pain, including members of one of this town’s oldest families. I’m not suggesting she deserved to die, but neither the police nor the FBI could figure out who killed her, so just drop it.” She spun toward the exit. “Now I have to go.” And with that, she strutted from the building.

Stunned, my mouth actually hanging open, I watched as she crossed the highway to her SUV.

“Yah, that girl’s a corker,” Margie said, joining me. “She’s a one-woman Chamber of Commerce. She loves these towns, and while she jokes a lot, she’s dead serious about keepin’ ’em goin’. She won’t let anythin’ stand in her way.”

Handing me another recipe card from the box, she added, “Ya may not have noticed, but Barbie likes my Pumpkin Bars. Ya might wanna jot down the recipe.” She stopped for a beat. “Ya might also wanna close your mouth before ya swallow a fly.”

Kennedy, Minnesota, has no motels, but Margie keeps two guest rooms, with attached baths, above the café, “just in case.” I guess my visit qualified as one of those “cases.”

I grabbed my overnight bag from my car and headed upstairs to freshen up before the benefit. I was wiped out from my drive, greasy from the time spent in Margie’s kitchen, and frustrated by my visit with Tundra Barbie.

I undressed and climbed into the shower. The soft water ran down my back, relaxing my muscles and washing my tension down the drain. I soaped up, rinsed off, and toweled dry. Then I flopped on the bed. I had a full evening ahead of me and knew a rest, even a ten-minute one, would do me good.

I woke to Kris Kristofferson. Not literally of course. Rather, I woke to his music, specifically, his rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee.” The song had made its way from the restaurant downstairs up through the floorboards. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …”

Squinting at the clock-radio on the dresser, I saw that my ten-minute rest had stretched into a thirty-minute nap. I contemplated rising but was too comfortable to make any sudden moves and remained curled crossways on the double bed, one towel wrapped around my head, another around my torso. “And nothin’ ain’t worth nothin’ but it’s free.”

From that vantage point, I studied the room. It was similar to the one I had when I was a little girl. The bed was crowned with a white, iron headboard and covered in a colorful, patchwork quilt that smelled fresh, as if recently brought in from the clothes line. Next to the door, a green drop-leaf table straddled two wooden chairs, and on the opposite wall, the antique low-boy dresser stood alone. The furniture pieces and colors weren’t identical to those in my old room, but the style was the same, as was the music wafting through the floor. “She’s lookin’ for the home I hope she’ll find.”

I was weaned on country rock. My parents were passionate about country dancing. Every Saturday night they joined their dance group down at the American Legion, where they perfected old moves and tried out new ones. During the week, they practiced at home, often persuading me, their only child, to join in.

Our house was always filled with the sounds of Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson. And while many kids undoubtedly hated that music, if for no reason than their parents liked it, I always enjoyed it. And I still feel connected to it. Probably because my folks died when I was young, and that music helps me stay close to them, or at least their memory.

When Kristofferson faded away, my thoughts shifted from days gone by to earlier that day and my conversation with Barbie. She’d said that Samantha Berg’s murder didn’t amount to much. It wasn’t worth talking about. But how often did a journalist speak that way about an unsolved homicide, especially one committed in a place where murder must hardly ever occur?

Pondering that, I rose and got dressed, tugging on a pair of blue jeans and slipping into a paisley, button-down, sleeveless blouse. I followed with a half-hearted attempt at brushing my hair. While not wet, it was terribly tangled from the wind outside and being wrapped in a towel for both my shower and my nap.

As I yanked at the snarls, I reminded myself that my assignment didn’t include writing about an old murder case, even if it would be far more exciting than a story about a day in the life of a small-town café owner—a story that most likely would never see print.

Setting my brush on the dresser, I swiped on some mascara and lip gloss. I don’t wear much makeup, but I try to highlight my lips and eyes. They’re my best features, and to my way of thinking, drawing attention to them limits focus on my frizzy, red mane.

I’d have preferred my hair be silky and Irish-setter red, but it wasn’t. It was curly and flame colored, prompting my dad to nickname me “Torch” when I was a kid. No one else dared call me that, but he loved the moniker, and I loved him, so he got away with it. And now that he was gone, I’d probably never do anything differently with my hair.