Prime Cut

“How much longer will this cleaning take? I need to bring the fourth graders out here!” she fussed. As is common when someone bothers the catering crew in the kitchen, her presence actually slowed down our cleaning process. But none of us dared point that out, and she finally trundled off.

“Can we help with Monday’s food?” I asked André as Julian dried the last of André’s pans and I packed them up. “We have another assignment, but we could meet you early … please?” I’d never forgive myself if the stress of Monday’s food preparation proved to be too much for him.

“No,” he insisted stubbornly. “You make me so nervous, Goldy! You do not need to watch me all the time. For Monday, I will do a very simple coffee break and lunch.”

“Promise to call and tell me how things went,” I urged, as Mountain Taxi pulled up for him. Among his many reluctances to compromise with the times, André had never learned to drive. Julian and I loaded up the cab’s trunk. André clambered in and swore he’d stay in touch.

When we reached home, Arch solemnly assured us that Jake was on the mend. The two of them had even gone for a very short walk. To my surprise, Tom had finally taken a break from his mysterious woodworking project to fire up the grill. I was very curious to know what he was up to in the basement, but I had no intention of asking if all the banging was yielding anything beyond ventilation to his frustrations. For my own part, I’d once decided in a fit of pique to construct a gingerbread version of McNichols Arena; halfway through, the walls had collapsed. Therapy projects, I’d concluded, are usually best left undiscussed.

I set the table for lunch and noticed our checkbook jammed up beside a stack of glasses on the kitchen counter. Maybe my husband had taken a close look at our finances and that was leading him to pound nails into two-by-fours. Without looking at the check register, I knew that even with the pay from André, only two thousand dollars and change separated us from the morass known as negative cash flow. And two thousand wasn’t much when sixteen hundred of it represented payments for my two upcoming jobs, and would have to cover the costs of food and labor for those events. Moreover, two thousand was half the estimate a hardware store employee I’d called had given when he’d come by to reckon what repairing Gerald Eliot’s damage would cost. And then there were the costs of Arch’s tuition if The Jerk didn’t pay; footing the bill for the free tasting party; keeping the larder stocked for the family. Add to this only a few hundred that might come in as an extra gratuity from Weezie’s party and the Hardcastle reception, and financial disaster loomed depressingly large.

When I poured tall glasses of ice water, my stomach rumbled. Never worry about money when you’re hungry, I’d learned during my lean post-Jerk days. Luckily, deliciously scented grill smoke was curling into the kitchen. I peeked through the back door. Tom had thawed the last of our jumbo shrimp and skewered them with fresh vegetables and fruit. The man was incorrigible.

Ten minutes later, the four of us were digging into tender grilled shrimp, hot, juicy pineapple, and dark, crunchy onion. I murmured thanks to Tom; he squeezed my hand. While we ate, Julian and I filled him in on what had happened at the Homestead: the report and the denial of André’s illness, Sylvia’s distress, Rufus’s tales of Gerald Eliot’s mess at the cabin. I peppered Tom with questions: Had Eliot been seeing a woman? Specifically, had he been seeing Rustine the model? Had they found other Eliot clients who might have been willing to kill him? Tom said his buddies at the department were questioning Cameron Burr, Leah Smythe, a country-club couple in the middle of a North Atlantic cruise, and the Montessori School people, where the directress had changed since Eliot had redone a bathroom there. The investigators hadn’t been able to find other clients of Eliot’s who still lived in Aspen Meadow. All those folks, according to neighbors, had had their houses finished by other remodelers, and moved away. Tom asked if I’d obtained a last name for Rustine. I replied in the negative.

“They’re looking into Eliot’s social life,” Tom told us. “He prided himself on being a bachelor. Was frequently seen getting hammered at the Grizzly Saloon. I’ll call Boyd, see if any more evidence has turned up at Burr’s place. Maybe they’ve found the last two cookbooks, but they just haven’t told Sylvia Bevans. Maybe they won’t tell me either.”

“Look at it this way,” I reasoned, “what if we found out Cameron didn’t kill Eliot? Which he didn’t, of course. It could help to clear you, since you didn’t want to arrest him for the murder in the first place.”

Arch and Julian exchanged a look. Tom said, “Who’s we, woman? I’m suspended and you’ve got your hands full trying to hold your business together.”

I helped myself to the last succulent shrimp. “It’s just not fair that Fuller gets to do a shoddy job, then blames you.”

“You’re reaching, Goldy. Besides, it’s Fuller’s show now. If I go around asking lots of background questions, and it gets back to him, he’ll claim interference. It’ll work against the investigation into me.”

“I bet that creep Litchfield who’s harassing Goldy had something to do with it,” Julian said defiantly. “Where was he the night Eliot was strangled? What if he knew about Eliot redoing Goldy’s kitchen and wanted to get rid of him, so Goldy’s kitchen stays a mess? Then, as a bonus, Goldy’s business falls flat because she hasn’t got a kitchen, Tom gets into trouble, and she has to sell out?”

“Now you’re really reaching,” Tom murmured.

“André did say someone had put pickles in his crab cakes,” I added, “and I found a hair in the food he served on Monday—a very unlikely mistake for him to make. Food sabotage is a long way from murder, though.”

“Don’t go off on some investigative campaign, you two,” Tom warned Julian and me.

“We’ll never even mention your name,” I vowed.

“That is not reassuring,” Tom observed.

Saturday I woke up disoriented, with a vague sense of dread. I stared at the clock. Seven o’clock. Downstairs, Tom was already sawing away on his mysterious project.

The phone rang. One of Tom’s co-workers returning his calls about the evidence? No: I suddenly remembered where I was going at ten this morning. To the jail. With Arch. To visit The Jerk. Maybe this was The Jerk calling now, from the cell block pay phone.

“Goldilocks’ Catering—” I began, but whoever it was hung up. I didn’t have caller ID. But at least I’d put a password on my computer.

I stretched my way through my yoga routine and pulled on a skirt and blouse. Arch met me downstairs, already dressed for his jail visit in dark jeans and an oxford-cloth shirt. On the kitchen table, a large platter of golden homemade biscuits had been stacked on a china platter next to a bowl of what looked like strawberry jam. Next to these delicacies was a note from Julian.

Gone to swim laps. New Southern biscuit recipe. Taste the strawberry conserve. Call the lifeguard at the rec if you need me today. J.

Arch bit into a conserve-slathered biscuit. Mouth full, he mumbled, “All I know is, Julian sure works hard for a guy who’s dropped out of college.”

“Yes, he does. He’s just … trying to prove himself, I think.” I sliced a biscuit and spooned on some conserve. The biscuit was light and flaky, the conserve tangy and filled with warm chunks of fresh strawberry. Heavenly. I fired up the espresso machine and told myself maybe this wouldn’t be too bad a day after all.

“All right!” Tom announced himself heartily as he banged up from the basement. His arms were laden with wooden panels, rolls of paper, and two large paper bags. “Time for you to see what your new kitchen is going to look like.” While Arch and I gave him puzzled looks, he paused and bowed. “Mrs. Schulz, this suspended cop is pleased to announce a metamorphosis. Meet your new contractor: Tom Schulz, kitchen builder extraordinaire.”

“What?” I exclaimed.

“First,” Tom continued, undaunted by my bafflement, “cabinets. Voilà!” He placed a two-foot-by-one-foot cabinet door in front of the cans and glasses cluttering the counter. “You always told me you wanted solid cherry, Miss G. So here you go.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded.

Tom sighed. “Just tell me if you like it.” I eyed the dark, smooth, cleanly detailed door. It was gorgeous.

“I like it,” Arch volunteered.

“Well, good.” Tom slapped sawdust off his hands. “While your mom’s deciding, take a look at this flooring.” He pulled several slats of wood from his mountain of supplies and pushed them together. “White oak. Select. It’ll lighten up the dark of the cherry.” His green eyes regarded me, begging for approval. “You like it?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. A voice in the back of my brain screamed: This is madness. How in the world are we going to pay for this?

“And now,” said Tom, with a Houdini flourish, “marble countertops.” He brought out a pale, gray-veined rectangle of stone. “Buddy of mine works for a granite fabricator,” he explained. “We were in the army together and I got the Saigon Special.” He placed the stone with its glints of silver next to the cherry cabinet door.

“Tom—” I began.

He straightened and put his arm around me. “Don’t say no. You’ve been wanting a new kitchen for a long time. You deserve one. Let me give it to you.”

“No.”

“And I took out a loan on my cabin.” He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Line of equity, actually. If I start the kitchen today, I should be done by the time they let me go back to work.”

“Tom, I have three bookings in the next week. I have to have a place to cook. What you’re talking about is too expensive and too much hassle. Please. Don’t do it.”

He kissed my cheek and gave me a wide grin. “Don’t worry, Miss G. I thought of your cooking needs already. I’m going to drape everything with plastic, set you up in the dining room, no sweat.”

I sank into a kitchen chair. “Please, Tom, what you’re talking about is a remodeling, not a repair. I would have to close. If the county health inspector came by, which he could at any time night or day, I’d be dead.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve already taken out a building permit! If the county health inspector can’t be bothered to stop by, that’s his problem!” Tom said with mock huffiness. “Besides, I’ve ordered everything. You wouldn’t believe how fast some people will move for a cop. The only thing you need to pick out is a window treatment for your bay window and back windows.”

“Tom! What back windows? For that matter, what bay window? Eliot was supposed to put one in. I paid for it but never got it.”

“Tha-a-t’s why you’re married to somebody in law enforcement!” Tom said jovially. “Boyd has all Eliot’s paperwork. I may not know about his love life, but I know Eliot ordered your window from The Window Warehouse in north Denver. They’ve got your bay window sitting on their dock. Unpaid for, of course, but we didn’t really think Eliot was going to be that considerate, did we?”

I tried one more time. “Please don’t do this—”

Tom winked at me. I hadn’t seen him so happy since before his suspension four days ago. “You’ll love it, Miss G. Promise.”

Not long after, Arch and I made our way to the jail. There, another shock awaited us: John Richard Korman had been in a fight. He walked into his side of the three-foot-by-three-foot concrete cubicle and seemed reluctant to face us through the pane of glass. Once I saw him, I knew why. His left eye was purple. There was an ugly cut on his forehead and a slash over his right cheek. His blond hair, always expensively cared for, had been ruthlessly shorn by the prison barber. The orange jumpsuit emphasized the fact that he had lost most of his tan, even though he’d only been incarcerated two weeks. John Richard Korman had always been a handsome guy, but it was clear jail did not agree with him.

“Gosh, Dad, what happened to you?” Arch spoke into the telephone, trying hard not to sound worried and stunned.

“Guy wanted to know why his head hurt all the time.” John Richard’s voice spiraled loudly out of the phone. He gave me a sour look. “I told him an empty brain echoes. He punched me.”

Arch murmured that that was too bad, then launched into his recitation of all the things that had happened to him since the last jail visit. I had asked him not to tell John Richard about Tom’s suspension. So, Arch’s news covered the fray resulting from Jake leaping on Craig Litchfield. Predictably, John Richard interrupted him.

“Your bloodhound attacked somebody?” John Richard’s voice crackled. “You could get us sued!”

“But, Dad—”

“I can’t afford to be sued,” he announced. “Put your mother on.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” I said as I took the phone. “How does Arch’s tuition get paid? It’s due now.”

“Ask Leland.” His tone was curt, dismissive.

“Leland? Leland who? What happened to your accountant?”

“Hugh Leland’s my all-purpose guy now. Lawyer, accountant, the works. He’s in the phone book. Need money? Have a heart-to-heart with Leland.” He smirked.

Needless to say, John Richard had not jumped right in with an offer to authorize payment for Arch’s tuition, which a judge had ordered him to pay in full. In the interest of keeping the peace on what was only our third jail visit, I nodded. But I made a mental note to call my own attorney, if the money was not forthcoming. I tried not to think of what my attorney might charge to pull the tuition out of The Jerk. That’s the price for alienation in our day: You have to compensate other people to fight for you.

Arch asked for the phone and I gladly handed it over. “Julian’s back,” he told his father, who could not possibly have cared less. But Arch talked on, undaunted, about summer vacation, playing with Todd, things he and Jake had done. Finally I relieved him of the phone; we were at twenty-eight minutes, thank God.

“See you next week,” I began.

“How’s Marla holding up?” John Richard demanded, his face again flattened with a smirk.

I was noncommittal. The Jerk could use information in twisted and cruel ways, I had learned. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

He only laughed and hung up the phone.

Before leaving, I asked if I could see Cameron Burr. The desk sergeant told me Burr had just started a visit with his lawyer, and was unavailable. I scribbled a note to be delivered to Cameron, with our phone number and begging him to call. But I knew he wouldn’t. Suspended or no, Tom represented the forces that had put Cameron behind bars; Cameron’s lawyer would tell him not to contact us.

When we started back up the mountain, the air was warm, the sky increasingly hazy. I rolled down the window. John Richard’s manner at the end of our visit still rankled.

“Does your dad know that Marla is being audited?” I asked my son.

Arch looked out the window. “I guess.”

I had heard the entire content of John Richard’s last two visits with Arch; no mention had been made of Marla’s troubles with the IRS. As John Richard’s new factotum, Hugh Leland might be aware of what was going on. But how then would Arch know that his father was aware of the audit?

“What do you mean, you guess? Dad told you he knew Marla was going through this IRS thing?”

He hesitated. “Well, don’t tell Marla I told you, okay?”

I sighed. “He didn’t do anything illegal, did he?”

“Oh, no. But when Dad was having financial problems last spring, the HMO’s not paying him his money and stuff, he had this idea of how to make money. I don’t think he knows that I know. I was supposed to be watching TV in his condo, but there was nothing on. When I turned it off, I overheard Dad telling one of his friends about the IRS paying a big reward to whoever turns in a tax cheater. Dad told his friend that Marla was the richest person he knew, and he was going to squeal on her to the IRS. I just thought it was a joke.” He shook his head. “I feel bad telling you, because he’s my dad and all. But I love Marla. I know it’s been awfully hard on her. Sometimes I just think Dad gets sort of like, carried away.”

I didn’t say what I was thinking. It would have exposed Arch to very bad language.

The next morning, Julian, Tom, Arch, and I went to the early service at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. I called Marla to see if she wanted us to come pick her up; she said she was having severe IRS-produced indigestion and couldn’t move from her bed. Given the circumstances, I decided against telling her about The Jerk’s hand in her current troubles. Julian had made some hazelnut-caramel rolls—Marla’s favorite—that he was eager to offer for tasting at the coffee hour. I didn’t tell her about them, either.

As the congregation began to read the Forty-sixth Psalm—God is my refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble—I realized that I craved very present help in a very big way. A friend of ours was in jail; Tom had been suspended; my business was in danger. Compounding these problems were the facts that our living-space was in an uproar and we were teetering on the brink of insolvency.

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. I prayed for Cameron and Barbara Burr. Without warning, I felt the weight of my ongoing resentment of our dead kitchen contractor. When people hurt you, it’s hard to let them go, no matter how they end up. But as my Sunday School class often reminded me, God will always take somebody in, even when they’re dead. Right, Mrs. Schulz?

I conjured up the bloated face of Gerald Eliot hanging between the sun room studs, and silently let him go.

“I’m sorry to put you through all this,” I told Tom that night as I pulled two loaves of homemade sandwich bread out of the oven. At my request, and in view of my continuing inability to talk to Cameron, Tom had spent an hour trying to find out about the evidence collected at Burr’s home. No one was available to chat about missing cookbooks, so Tom had vowed to go ask Boyd some questions the next day, suspension or no.

Instead of banging about in the wreckage we called our kitchen, Tom had thoughtfully spent the afternoon working on his plans in the basement so we could prepare for the morgue lunch the next day. With Julian’s help, I’d stewed a chicken, seared a London broil—both would go into the following days’ salads—made vichyssoise and a huge salad of barely steamed vegetables that would chill overnight and be lightly dressed with a raspberry vinaigrette the next morning. Tom received a test bowl of the delectable, chive-scented vichyssoise and pronounced it superb.

Before going to bed, I tried to check in with André. Pru’s caregiver said André had done a great deal of cooking this evening and was already asleep. She promised to ask him to call.

Monday morning dawned bright and cool. I chopped tarragon, celery, and pecans to combine with the moist, flavorful chicken pieces, then sliced the beef into thin wedges and mixed it with a spicy vinaigrette. At seven, Julian joined me and mixed flour with yeast and buttermilk to make hot rolls to go with the salads. Arch took off for another walk with Jake. Tom announced he was going for his breakfast with Boyd, where he hoped to hear about the latest Andy Fuller shenanigans. Julian and I were happily engaged in our work until just past ten o’clock, when the phone rang. I scooped it up and gave my business greeting.

“This is Dr. Sheila O’Connor, the coroner. Goldy—” Her voice cracked.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I replied calmly. At the last minute, clients often fear the caterer will forget to show up. “Don’t panic. I’m just putting it all together.”

She cleared her throat. “We have a body with only a tentative identification.”

I made wrapping motions to Julian and pointed to the salads on the counter. “So do you want me later—”

“This … man had no driver’s license, performed no military service,” Sheila said. After wrapping the salads, Julian pointed to the cardboard boxes; I nodded. “We don’t have any fingerprints. There aren’t any dental records.” I exhaled and watched Julian fold in the cardboard flaps. Sheila continued, “And his next of kin can’t do the ID we need. On the body, I mean. This man’s wife—widow—is blind.”

The floor under my feet shifted. I stumbled toward a chair and sat down. I whispered, “What?”

“Goldy, we need you here at the morgue. To identify the body,” Sheila repeated. “We believe the dead man’s your teacher, André Hibbard.”

Chapter 11

“Pru.” I was clutching the phone so hard my fingers hurt. “His wife. Where is she?”

“She felt she had to come down here, and she’s on her way. Her nurse is bringing her.” Sheila’s voice had become businesslike. “Goldy, I’m terribly sorry to have to ask you to help us. Nobody here seemed to know who else to call.”

“You’re not sure it’s André.”

“We’re pretty sure.” No hesitation. “The arriving crew found him in the Merciful Migrations cabin kitchen this morning. Looks as if he had a massive coronary.”

“A heart attack,” I said dully.

“We won’t know until the autopsy is done. But we can’t do what we need to do until a family member or someone who knew him well identifies the body.” She paused. “Please forgive me. Usually we use fingerprints or dental records or a relative, but none of those are available. His wife said to call you, that you lived nearby and used to work for him.”

“I’m sure there’s been a mistake. When I get there, I can clear it up.”

Sheila hesitated. “Is Tom there?”

“No. Just this … a young man who works for us.”

Sheila said, “Please come, Goldy. I can explain what we know once you get here.”

“Jeez, Goldy, what’s wrong?” Julian wanted to know. “You look terrible. Has something happened to Arch? Has the booking been canceled?”

“No, I … no.”

His dark eyes searched my face. “Look, Goldy, if the booking fell through, I can take this food to Aspen Meadow Christian Outreach. We’ll find some more jobs. Come on.” He ran water into a glass and set it on the table in front of me. “Come on. Drink this. I’m going to call Tom.”

“He’s … having breakfast. With Boyd.”

“No, no, actually he isn’t. That’s just where he wants you to think he is.” Julian hesitated. “Look, don’t get mad at him, okay? He’s having a polygraph today. About the conflict he’s having with that assistant district attorney who thinks he knows everything.”

I stared at the water glass. A polygraph. Tom didn’t think he could tell me.

“André … my teacher. He’s dead, Julian. He had a heart attack. They need me to come down to the morgue.” I gripped my old oak table. This was just a mistake. A stupid error.

Julian snagged the cellular phone from its charger, stuffed it into his pocket, and assumed a calm, pastoral tone. “I’ll pack the Rover and then honk from the driveway.”

When he beeped not long afterward, I numbly walked outside. This is just a stupid error, I kept telling myself. It’s not André. There’s been an awful mistake.

Less than an hour later, I took a deep breath and prayed for strength as Dr. O’Connor led frail, bent Pru Hibbard, her nurse, and me down the hall to the morgue’s work area. Pru wore a faded pink cashmere sweater and matching skirt, along with a strand of pearls that matched her hair. Her caregiver, a waxy-skinned, thin-lipped older woman with broad shoulders and short, dark hair, nodded at me.

“I’m Wanda Cooney.” Her voice was clear but low. “We can talk more later.”

The four of us walked through the door toward where I was to do the ID. Dr. O’Connor drew back a curtain on metal rings.

I swallowed. There hadn’t been a mistake.

André’s body was covered to the shoulders with a sheet. His cheeks were no longer pink, but gray. The small portion of his white shirt that showed was cruddy with dust. His silvery hair was matted.

“Yes.” My voice sounded like someone else’s. “It is André Hibbard.” I turned to Pru. “Are you all right?”

Pru’s watery blue eyes wandered around the makeshift cubicle. Her lower lip trembled. She said, “I want to go.” Without waiting for me to respond, Wanda slowly guided Pru away.

I turned back to look at André’s immobile face, then at Sheila. “Can’t you tell me anything more about what happened?”

“We needed the ID first.” She moved away from the gurney. “You should go back to the other room.”

“Not yet. Please, tell me something, Sheila. What was he doing when he had the attack? Was he alone?”

“Rufus Driggle called us,” Sheila murmured. “André had phoned to see if he could come early to do some prep work. Driggle opened the gate for the taxi at seven. Driggle didn’t stay because he had to go into Denver for film. When he came back at nine, he found André on the kitchen floor. When he couldn’t rouse him, he phoned the sheriff’s department.”

I touched the sheet. “How did André get so dirty? His clothes? His apron?”

“From falling on a floor, Goldy.” She cocked her head. “Mrs. Hibbard confirms he had a history of heart problems, that that’s why he quit the restaurant. He was on Lanoxin, to amplify his heartbeat. We’ll get his medical file, see if his condition has been worsening lately.”

André. I swallowed. “This past Friday he had some symptoms while he was at the Homestead, where he was catering. The paramedics came out and gave him a clean bill of health. André swore to me that he was fine.” I shook my head; I should have insisted on catering with him today instead of taking the morgue lunch booking. “He was sixty-five. Vigorous, but—” I stopped, transfixed by something I hadn’t seen earlier. I pointed toward André’s hand. “What’s this?”

Sheila leaned in closer. “A burn?”

“No. No way.”

Sheila peered at the curved, inch-long mark on the back of André’s left: hand. “Yeah, it’s a burn. Recent.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “Time to go, Goldy.”

I stared at the mark on André’s hand. “But,” I protested, “there’s nothing out at that cabin that he could have burned himself on. I mean, not that looked like that.”

Sheila sighed.

I stared at Andre’s right hand, motionless on the gurney. “What’s this?”

Sheila O’Connor reached into her pocket, retrieved a pair of surgical gloves, and snapped them on. She picked up the hand I was pointing to. On the side of the other hand, there was another, smaller dark spot.

“Another burn, looks like. He was a cook, Goldy. You have to trust us. We haven’t started to do our work here yet…. He could have burned himself just before or while he was having the attack. People lose control during a coronary.”

I was having trouble breathing. “Sheila—”

“The department is already doing a sweep of the cabin.”

“Can you give me the autopsy results?”

She snorted. “You must be joking.”

“He was my teacher, Sheila.”

“Let’s go.” Her voice was increasingly chilly, and I wondered if she was afraid I was going to get hysterical on her.

“I need to go help Pru,” I replied. “André would want me to be with her. But I’m not going anywhere until you promise to call me.”

She tsked. “Have Tom give me a ring in a couple of days.” She took my arm. “Right now, you and I are going to the lunchroom.”

We came through the opaque glass door to the brightly wallpapered lunchroom. A sudden noisy wash of people engaged in conversation made me reel back. Sheila murmured something about going to her office and left my side.

My mind seemed to splinter; I observed that Julian had done a superb job serving lunch. The salad platters were littered with shreds of lettuce and crushed cherry tomatoes; the roll baskets were forlornly empty. The morgue staff was digging into their dessert. Julian was chatting with two older women. When he saw me, he left them and walked quietly to my side.

“Well?” When I nodded that yes, it was André, he said, “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. You did a nice job here. But … I need to help Pru now.”

“I called Tom at the department. He offered to pick me up with all the equipment. I thought … you might want my car. But now I’m worried about you driving.”

“I just need some coffee, please, Julian. And maybe a glass of water. I have to help Pru,” I repeated, as if giving that help would structure my next few hours and make things clear. How could André—so full of life and mischief—be gone?

Julian brought me water and coffee and handed me his keys. I mumbled a thanks. “Goldy. Are you sure you can drive?”

I sipped the dark coffee; it tasted like ashes. “Yes, I think so. Where did the rest of them—Pru, Sheila—where did they go?”

He rummaged in one of the boxes, pulled out my purse, and handed it to me. “They’re talking in the office. The Rover’s on the far east side of the parking lot, remember? I’ll meet you back at home.”

I waved at the detritus on the lunchroom table. “But—”

“Go.”

In the office waiting area, Sheila O’Connor talked quietly with Wanda Cooney. Another morgue staff person was shuffling papers and asking Pru questions. Pru, seated next to the desk, mumbled answers. The gist of their conversation had to do with Pru not being able to see and therefore not being able to sign the necessary papers. The papers were being sent on to an attorney. Wanda acknowledged my arrival with a nod, then walked over to attend Pru.

Sheila O’Connor told us: “We’ll release the body for burial in three or four days. There’s a committee at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Aspen Meadow that helps with a memorial service or funeral arrangements when the spouse or family can’t.”

Pru’s voice rose, tremulous. “Goldy? Are you there? You were his favorite.”

I went over to Pru’s side and leaned down to embrace her. “Let’s go back to your place. You should be home.”

Sheila motioned me over for a last message. “Tom called. He wanted to know if you’d prefer to wait for him.” When I bit the inside of my lip and didn’t reply, Sheila added, “I promised I’d call him back, if you want to leave right away.”

“Tell him I’ll meet him at home in a couple of hours. Tell him I’ll be fine—not to worry.”

I headed west in Julian’s black Range Rover behind Wanda Cooney’s dull green Suburban. Overhead, the sun shone briefly between mushrooming gray clouds. One of our summer thunderstorms was brewing. The half of my brain still operating logically recalled that the drive to the Blue Spruce condo would take forty-five minutes. Time to focus on Pru, whom I barely knew, despite my long friendship with André.

But I could not. I ground the gears and felt my mind shift from rationality to despair. André dead. It wasn’t possible.

Raindrops spattered across the windshield. The wipers scraped noisily over the glass as the van crested the interstate; the Continental Divide, thickly shrouded in mist, came into view. A heart attack. Two burns.

Tongues of lightning flicked above the near mountains as we turned into Aspen Meadow. At the turnoff to Blue Spruce, I glanced down Main Street. Stupid, unexpected worries about the tasting party the following day loomed. How would I gather supplies? When would I manage to finish the cooking? How could the packing and serving get pulled together? Julian will do it, I told myself. Thank God for Julian.

Water splatted on the glass and I turned on my lights. Beside the road, Cottonwood Creek gushed and foamed. A memory of André trying dinner menus appeared from nowhere. He would always offer the cooking staff dishes laden with possibilities: cranberry-glazed pork with sweet potato pudding; seared steak Hong Kong with creamy risotto; poached Dover sole nestled in steamed artichokes and hollandaise. He would concentrate intently as he drizzled blackberry sauce over a spill of crepes, then have me taste as he meticulously wrote out times for prepping and cooking. He would cap his pen and say, “Now, Goldy. All is well?”

No. All is not well.

I needed information. I needed to know what had happened to him. How it could have happened to him. I picked up my cellular phone and punched in the number for information. When the operator answered I asked for the number for Mountain Taxi. Yes, I replied to the operator’s query; I would like her to connect me.

The taxicab dispatcher’s voice crackled. I identified myself as a cook who worked with André Hibbard, and could I speak with the driver who brought Mr. Hibbard to work this morning? The dispatcher put me on hold. It was unlikely that the police would have questioned the driver already, I figured. If for some reason the sheriff’s department didn’t want me to talk to the driver, then I would have to come up with another strategy.

The line filled with static and then cleared. “Yeah, this is Mike. I took the chef this morning. I’ve been driving him out to that job site. Who’re you again?”

“It’s Goldy Schulz, the caterer. I used to work with André.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve been taking him to work lately. The old guy couldn’t drive. I gotta call here, whaddaya need to know?”

I asked about his schedule this morning. Mike had picked André up at six-thirty, an hour earlier than usual. When I asked why so early, Mike replied, “I don’t know. I ast the chef, What you cooking out there this time of the morning? You already got two big boxes of food. Ain’t you done yet? And he got all huffy, the way he does, you know, and said, Yeah, he was done with the cooking, but that he still had work to do. That was it. Told me he’d call when he was done, the way he usually does, only he didn’t. Did you take him back?”

“No.” I wasn’t going to tell Mike that André was dead; he’d find out soon enough. I forced myself to concentrate on my driving. The Rover hurtled along a winding paved road bordered by a steeply cut cliff. I glanced at the creek and meadow on the right and said, “Was anyone else there? Anyone at all?”

“Nope. The gate was open, and that was what I was worried about, but André had called ahead about that. No cars. I helped him carry the boxes across the creek the way I usually do, then I left.”

“And what was in the boxes?”

“His food and his beaters and whatnot. Why? Some-thin’ wrong?”

“What food? Did he tell you?”

“He told me, but now I can’t remember. Wait … individual custards, he told me. People love ‘em, he said.”

“No fruit to slice, no coffee cake to make?”

“Nope. He’d made muffins to go with the custards. He even gave me one, had orange peel in it. It was good.”

I took a deep breath. “Did you notice his hands? Had he been burned? Did he complain that he’d been burned?”

“I didn’t notice anything wrong with his hands, and he didn’t mention them. What is this about?”

I told Mike it was nothing, thanked him, and signed off. When I’d replaced the cell I gripped the wheel. André had made custards and muffins ahead of time, gone to work early to do unknown extra work, burned himself before or during a coronary attack, and died. Made perfect sense. I wrenched the wheel to the right and turned into the Blue Spruce Retirement Village.

Wanda had Pru settled in her small blue-and-white sitting room. I offered to make tea. The condo was a tribute to Pru’s love of teapots. Every available table, shelf, and cupboard in the sitting room and kitchen was crowded with teapots: fat and gold-rimmed, slender and blue, pink and detailed, new and antique. I’d been in their home only once before, when Pru and André had first moved in and I’d brought over a loaf of oatmeal bread. I veered away from that memory as I found cups, bags of Pru and André’s favorite English Breakfast tea, spoons, lemon slices, sugar, cream, and arranged them on a tray with a plain ivory pot.

“Pru, I want to help,” I said, once I’d served her tea and we were settled in the sitting room on plump blue-and-white slipcovered chairs. Wanda Cooney had excused herself to make phone calls. I told Pru about the church and funeral arrangements. She nodded, sipped from her cup, and smoothed the folds in her pink cashmere skirt. The wall above the couch where she sat was crowded with mounted photos of André: offering a full-size fudge football to a Denver sportscaster, frosting his renowned Stanley Cupcakes for our triumphant Avalanche. I’d later begged for the recipe; of course, he’d given it to me.

“Thank you for the tea,” Pru murmured, her unseeing eyes fixed on her hands, clasped around her fragile teacup.

I took a deep breath; the doorbell bonged. Wanda’s voice murmured into the phone in the next room. When the bell rang again, I rose to answer it.

Through the peephole I was surprised to see Leah Smythe’s half-brother, Bobby Whitaker. The handsome male model was quickly combing his long, dark curls in anticipation of the door being opened. Unfortunately, Bobby, now dressed in a shiny suit, did not appear much more confident than when he’d been ordered to take off his shirt a week ago.

I opened the door. “Bobby? Why are you here?”

“Ah, are you a relative of the deceased?” he said nervously. He was clutching an expensive raincoat. He did not remember me from the auditions. I told him who I was and why I was there.

“Are you here to see Pru?” I asked, confused. As before, I wondered, what is the deal with this guy?

“Yes, well, I’m with High Creek Realty.” He scooped a business card out of his inner pocket and handed it to me. “We … try to meet the needs of mountain residents. You don’t know if … Mrs. Hib-bard’s going into a nursing home, do you?”

“I thought you were concentrating on modeling.”

“I do both, actually. Modeling and real estate. I’m here to see if Prudence Hibbard wants to sell the condo.”

Anger fizzed through my frayed nerves. “We just got home from the morgue, you idiot.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got a client ready to buy this condo—”

I thrust his card back at him. “Go away.”

“You don’t know if she needs the money,” Bobby objected. He held up his hands in a defensive posture. “Hey, listen to me for a sec. How do you know Mrs. Hibbard doesn’t need the cash that’s tied up in the equity of this place?” The wide shoulders inside the shiny, fashionable suit lifted in a gesture of helplessness.

“Scram,” I said tersely. “Don’t ever come back. And if any more vultures like you show up, I’ll boil them for stew to serve at the next High Creek Realty lunch.”

He backed away. I gripped the door hard. Much as I wanted to slam the heavy wood into its casing, I restrained myself. Pru mustn’t be further upset. Think about Pru, I told myself as my heart hammered. And calm down, I added as I leaned against the closed door. Pull it together for Andre’s sake. After a few moments, loud knocks banged against my head. The doorbell bonged, followed by more rapping. I wrenched the door open. If it was another real estate agent, I would kill him with my bare hands….

It was not a real estate agent.

It was a caterer.

Chapter 12

Craig Litchfield’s hair was neatly coiffed, his handsome face carefully blank. He was dressed in a collarless dark brown shirt and matching pants, the mahogany equivalent of the coal-black outfit muddied by Jake the previous week. Was this a uniform you could get in different colors? I wondered. Did he order it from a catalog?

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. He cocked his head and grinned when I didn’t answer. “What, that big dog of yours got your tongue?”

“I’m here to help Pru Hibbard,” I said in a low voice.

“Oh?” he replied, mock-polite. “May I help her, too?”

“I doubt it.”

He glanced down the row of town houses. “Okay, Goldy. I’ve had enough. Let me in. I’m here for the same reason you are.”

Had I missed something? “What reason? Please. You need to leave. You couldn’t be here for the same reason I am. He was my teacher. And an old friend.”

He bristled. “Let me talk to her.”

“No.”

“I’ll take you to court.”

“For what?”

He reconsidered, then softened the muscles of his handsome face and passed a hand over his helmet of manicured hair. Of course, these conciliatory gestures put me even more on my guard. “I want to offer forty thousand for Andre’s client list, menus, schedules, prices, and recipes. Cash.” He tilted his head, oozing sympathy. “You know you can’t match that. You need to let me see the widow. She might need the money right away, to pay for the funeral, whatever.”

From the sitting room, Pru’s thin voice called my name. I told Litchfield, “I don’t know how you found out André had passed away. But I’m going to close this door now. Don’t knock. Don’t come back. If you want, call Pru’s caregiver and set up an appointment with their attorney.”

His face darkened with fury. He put out his foot. But I was too quick for him and slammed the door.

I returned to the sitting room. The telephone had rung and Pru was speaking into it. Wanda Cooney tugged my arm. I followed her into the kitchen. André’s gleaming copper pans hung clustered from a thick wrought-iron ring suspended from the ceiling. It was a beautiful, spotless kitchen, lined with pans and teapots that André would never sauté with or make English Breakfast in again. Tears pricked my eyes.

“Pru will be all right,” Wanda told me. “I’ve called several of her friends. They all want to talk to her or come over.”

My shoulders relaxed with relief. “Thanks.”

“Who was at the door? We’re expecting Monsignor Fields, but he said he couldn’t be here for about an hour.”

“Nobody, really. Just … a couple of creeps wanting to buy the house, Andre’s business, even his recipes. I sent them packing.”

Wanda was incredulous. “How could they have known—?”

“Oh, somebody at the morgue probably gets paid to tip people off. Anyway, they’re gone, so don’t worry. If anybody comes to the door that you don’t know, call the Furman County Sheriff’s Department.” Wanda, speechless, nodded. I glanced into the sitting room. Pru held the phone to her ear, weeping softly. I took a deep breath and asked, “Should I stay?”

“We’ll be fine,” Wanda replied.

“Do you need food? Shopping done? Please tell me.”

“No.” Her voice was doubtful. “Not that I can think of.”

I went into the sitting room and knelt at Pru’s feet. She told the person on the phone to please hold for a moment, then reached out to touch my hair.

“It’s Goldy,” I said.

“Dear Goldy. Thank you for being with us. He loved you so much.” Tears streamed down Pru’s pale face. “He always bragged about you.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” I assured her. “Call me if you need help with the church, or anything else. Anything at all.”

Pru nodded and went back to her phone call. I checked through her lace curtains to make sure the road in front of her condominium was empty. There was no sign of unwelcome visitors. “I’ll call tomorrow,” I told Wanda Cooney, then left.

I piloted the Rover from the paved maze that wound through Blue Spruce Retirement Village onto the wide dirt road that ran past the complex. The dirt road leading to dense housing was not an uncommon sight in Colorado. A developer would buy acreage in a remote spot along a wide, unpaved road. At such remote locations, the county usually wouldn’t pave roads through residential areas, so the builder took on that task himself, naming his byways “Huntington Green” and “Foxhound Ridge,” as if his subdivision were an outpost of an English manor instead of dense housing in the middle of nowhere. Once the residents realized they were forty minutes from the nearest grocery store, and four times that long in a blizzard, they’d already bought in.

Rain drummed on the Rover roof. I passed a lumbering road grader and tried to ignore the emptiness gnawing my insides. André was now part of that group we ambiguously referred to as the departed. As my signal blinked to make the turn to Aspen Meadow, I cracked my window. Next to the state highway, the wind shuffled through a stand of aspens. A new blue-on-white metal sign swayed in front of the trees: FOR SALE—COMMERCIAL-ZONED LAND EIGHT MILES AHEAD! 200 ACRES! Great, I thought as I negotiated the turn. The Blue Spruce folks might get a snazzy grocery store yet.

A hunger headache loomed and I realized belatedly that it was almost four o’clock. I’d had a minimal breakfast and no lunch. When I’d left the morgue, Julian had been cleaning up salad detritus. Hardly appetizing, but the memory made my stomach growl. Funny how dealing with death does not remove the exigencies of life.

Cook, I decided. Go home and fix something that André would have made for you.

The mist of rain had lifted by the time I nosed the Rover into our driveway. Tom was making a show of feeding his roses; absurdly, I wondered if he’d found Craig Litchfield’s cigarette butt. By the look he gave me, I knew he’d been worried. I felt a pang of guilt: I’d turned off the cellular after calling Mountain Taxi.

“I swear, Goldy.” Tom dumped the last of a solution on a pink-blossomed rugosa. “You were gone so long, I couldn’t—” His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. Please. Come here.” I walked toward him and he held me in a very long hug. He smelled of laundry fresh from the dryer. “Are you all right?” I nodded into his shoulder. “How is Pru?”

“Not too bad,” I murmured, holding him tight. “Where are Arch and Julian?”

“Arch is at the Druckmans’. Julian’s cooking for your shindig tomorrow. I was so worried about you I couldn’t stay inside. Come on in,” he urged. “I’ve got something to show you.” He took my hand. Of course I assumed that Tom had been cooking, too. With no job to go to, he’d probably prepared a fudge meringue or tower of shrimp. But when we came into the kitchen, Julian merely glanced up and nodded. Then he went back to cutting a pan of polenta into diamond shapes. I scanned the room. It looked odd. Except for the polenta, there was no food. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a back door.

“Oh my God, Tom,” I said, astonished. I glanced from the plastic-covered area over the sink on the side wall to large plastic sheets covering a huge, new gash in the back wall. Act grateful, some inner voice warned, but it was once again drowned out. “What have you done?” I murmured to Tom as I gaped at the hole in the wall. “Do you know what’s going to happen to me if the health inspector sees that? I’ll be closed down. I thought you weren’t going to … I mean, how could you … Tom!”

He dropped my hand. “I’ve been working all day on this. At least take a look. I’m going to take out the wall, too.”

I pointed to the area beside the place where, up until this morning, there had been a door. “That wall?”

“That’s where your new windows are going to go.” There was a tick of impatience in his reply.

A buzz filled my brain. “I thought we were just talking about this—”

“Look, Goldy, I am sorry—” Tom began. “But this is what you wanted—”

“I never said—”

“Uh, guys?” interrupted Julian as he rinsed his hands in the sink. “Goldy has, or we have, a big tasting party tomorrow? And we need to work on it. Or I need to work on it.” He dried his hands and then crossed his arms, uncertain. “Look, Goldy, I know I said this before, but you were a great pupil for André. He must have been very proud to be your teacher.”

“Thanks.”

Julian squinted at us and shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t mean to intrude with details, but do you just want me to do this party? I know it’s only for three people, at least, that’s what you told me. I can’t check because I can’t get into your computer anymore, unless you tell me the password—”

Tom held up his hands. “Julian, can you give us a few minutes?”

“Sure.” With his brow furrowed, he levered the polenta diamonds onto a waiting platter, tucked plastic wrap around the edges, and placed it in the walk-in refrigerator. He stripped off his apron. “Want me to go get Arch, pick up some food for dinner?”

“That would be great,” Tom replied warmly, as he pulled two twenties out of his pocket and handed them to Julian. My out-of-work husband, the money man, I thought bitterly. Julian picked up his wallet, keys, and a plastic container that looked as if it contained cookies. He pointed at the plastic-draped hole in my wall.

“May I go through that way, or will I screw something up?” he asked. Tom made a go-ahead gesture. With a rustle of plastic and quick-step across the deck, Julian was gone.

Tom sighed. “Let’s start over,” he said. A moment later, he carefully placed two crystal glasses of sherry on the table. “Please sit down.”

“Thanks.” I looked at the amber liquid without touching it. “I haven’t had any food, so this will probably go straight to my head.”

Tom opened the door to our walk-in refrigerator. In the door’s black reflection, my face looked drawn and angry. Tom brought out some cheese, then pulled a box of crackers from one of our few remaining cupboards. A moment later, he slid an offering of butter crackers and fat wedges of Brie to the center of the table.

“Eat something. Then we can talk about André. That is, if you want to.”

I stared at the crackers and cheese. “I had to identify the body.”

“I heard. I’m sorry, Goldy. Honestly, I am.” He leaned over and squeezed my hand. “And I’m sorry I sprang the kitchen stuff on you before you were ready. It’s just that I have to get started.”

“It’s okay.” I bit carefully into a crisp cracker topped with the creamy cheese. The sherry was like fire in my chest. Fire … I said, “Tom, there’s something that’s been bothering me all day. André had burn marks on his hands.”

“Burn marks? What kind of burn marks?”

“He wouldn’t have done that to himself,” I rushed on. “Plus, he went out to the cabin an hour early to do extra food prep, and that’s not like him, especially when the kitchen there is so small … and for him to die right after Gerald Eliot, and Cameron’s arrest … I mean, it’s all pretty weird….”

Tom’s eyes searched mine, which had again filled without warning. “Start over,” he told me solemnly. He scooted his chair over so he could rub my back.

The comfort of his warm, accepting presence made talk possible. I told him about the call from Sheila O’Connor, about going to the morgue, having the conversation with the cabdriver, who said André had gone to the cabin early. I told him about visiting Blue Spruce, dealing with the intrusions from Bobby Whitaker the Realtor and Craig Litchfield the caterer. I told him about poor Pru. Thinking about what André’s death had done to Pru’s world, a sob closed my throat.

Tom nodded. “So Sheila’s thinking heart attack?”

I exhaled. “Can they find out exactly when he had the heart attack?” I asked. “And how he burned himself?” My voice sounded suddenly shrill.

“I’m sure the department will check it out,” Tom said quietly. Outside, the rain started up again. Mist rolled into our yard and pressed against the dining room windows. Raindrops pattered on the plastic sheeting Tom had put up. “You know the drill,” he went on. “They secure the scene, sweep it to determine what happened. There’ll be an autopsy, toxicology, to see what actually caused his death, whether it was a heart attack or what.” I closed my eyes. “If Sheila said I could call her about it, I will.”

I said, “You can ask around, can’t you? Please?” It was part statement, part plea.

“Of course.” His voice was a murmur, like the rain. “I just need to go easy. And so do you, Miss G. You know, if this had happened to someone I didn’t know, I’d say you need a victim advocate. You’re not the victim, but you were close to André, and it was an unexpected death.”

“You can be my advocate.”

He smiled at me. “Can’t. I’m your new kitchen contractor.”

“Don’t joke.” “I’m not.”

Julian and Arch banged in before he could reply, laden with three bags of carry-out Italian food: ziti with marinara, fettucine alfredo, pizza bianca. I looked at my watch: incredibly, almost half an hour had gone by. The few crackers with cheese had filled me up. But I ached to be with people.

Arch gave me a brief hug and whispered that I was a good mom, his standard assurance in rough times that things would turn out fine. His cheek was like sandpaper. Although he had no beard yet and his voice only occasionally cracked, he had begun to shave with great hopefulness on his fourteenth birthday. The razor had been a gift from Tom; I would never have thought of it.

“André was old, wasn’t he?” My son’s voice was anxious, even though he had only met André a few times during my stint at the restaurant. Still, he wanted to put a spin on sudden death. “I mean, he had retired and everything, right?”

“Yes, hon.”

Julian dressed a green salad with balsamic vinaigrette, heated some breadsticks I’d made the previous week, and set out all the food. When we said grace, I offered a silent prayer for Pru. Despite the problems besetting our family, at least I had companionship and comfort. Except for her nurse, Pru now had no one, and my heart ached for her.

As Julian expertly twined fettucine onto a fork, he again brought up the following day’s tasting party. “Thought we could do that fantastic grilled fish, with grilled polenta and a fruit salsa. What do you think, Goldy? I called your meat and seafood supplier, and she had fresh escolar. I had her deliver five pounds of it while you were out at Andre’s place. She said she’d put it on your bill. I hope that’s okay.” He paused, eager but embarrassed. “I mean, does this sound good to you? We do sort of need to discuss stuff.”

I struggled to remember the menu we’d finally decided on for the postponed tasting party. Oh, yes: I had been planning to roast a pork tenderloin and serve it with Cumberland sauce. Pork is plentiful and inexpensive in the fall, and people enjoy its heartiness when the weather turns colder. But the escolar would be good for dieters, or at least for people who think eating fish entitles them to dessert. “I don’t know about grilling fish at the Homestead,” I told Julian uncertainly. “But it might work. Maybe with an exotic slaw to complement the salsa and polenta.”

Tom smiled and I knew what he was thinking: At least we weren’t talking about death or remodeling.

“You can grill at the museum,” Julian said authoritatively. “I know because I went over in the van once your supplier brought the escolar. I had a chat with the curator lady, Sylvia. Took her some truffles left from lunch.”

“The Soirée committee might see that as cheating,” I pointed out gently.

“No, it isn’t,” Julian protested. “Besides, Sylvia’s not even one of the people who decides.” He looked at me innocently. “Is she?”

“No, but she’ll probably be there and influence the decision-makers, who are Mark, Weezie Harrington, and Edna Hardcastle.”

“Oh, brother,” said Julian.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Arch piped up.

“Can’t we have some of the truffles, too?”

“Absolutely,” Julian replied. He retrieved a foil-covered platter, and uncovered his special dark truffles dipped in white chocolate.

“You are too good,” I said to Julian as I bit into the exquisitely smooth, densely creamy ganache.

“Sylvia Bevans loved them. Had a couple while she told me her problems.” He measured out coffee for espresso. He pulled the shots, then dumped them over glasses half-filled with ice and whole milk. “Oh, by the way, she said they found one of the missing cookbooks.”

“What?” I demanded. “When? Which one?”

“A piece of evidence was returned?” Tom asked sharply. “The department found it at the site, or Sylvia had it all along?”

“That Watkins Cookbook she kept complaining had been swiped, remember?” He handed the iced coffees to Tom and me, fixed one for himself and dosed it with sugar, then sank into a chair. “The cops told her they found it in the back of Mr. Burr’s truck. But they finished their search of the house and guest house, and never found the last one. They told her it’s probably gone for good, tossed out in the road or something.”

“Thrown out of the truck?” I asked, incredulous.

“Gosh, Goldy, I’m sorry. Mrs. Bevans doesn’t believe someone could have tossed her beloved copy of The Practical Cook Book out on the road, but if the killer was that stupid, she said to ask Tom if he could search for it. She wants everything back the way it was. The woman was a wreck. Remember all that complaining she was doing to André? Since the cops think the museum theft was just an attempt to cover up the murder, they’re sticking with their the-last-cookbook-got-chucked-away theory. Sylvia doesn’t care about their theory. She says she has to have The Practical Cook Book, because some old handwriting of Charlie Smith is scrawled across one of the recipes. Who’s Charlie Smith?”

“Smythe. Grandfather of Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington,” I supplied. “He built the Merciful Migrations cabin.” Where André died.

“Oh,” said Julian. “According to Sylvia, Charlie Smythe’s handwriting could make the cookbook real valuable, like a collector’s item, at least in Aspen Meadow. And here’s something else: Sylvia said André called her up this past weekend, after we catered together at the Homestead? He said he was interested in some recipes.”

“Some recipes?” I echoed.

“Yep. André asked if Sylvia had photocopies of their historic cookbooks in the museum files, and if so, could he have his own photocopy of The Practical Cook Book.”

“You’re kidding. A copy of the entire cookbook?”

“Nope, I’m not kidding, and yep, the whole cookbook. Sylvia told him sure, she’d make a copy for him. But he never showed up to get it.” He gave me a wide eyed look. “I’m really sorry I brought this up. You probably don’t want to be reminded of your teacher right now.”

“Why would André want a photocopy of The Practical Cook Book?” I asked, but of course none of them had a clue. Nor did I, since I knew that André never gave two turkey drumsticks about American cooking. Plus he prided himself on being a chef of great stature. I could not imagine why he would want photocopied recipes for dishes he would have scoffed at: white bread, brown sauce, yellow cake. “This doesn’t make sense,” I said to Tom.

“It’s strange,” he agreed. “Four cookbooks are stolen. Eliot is killed. All but one cookbook are retrieved. A chef who asks for a photocopy of the last missing cookbook—which is almost a hundred years old—turns up dead before he can get it.”

Tom dialed the sheriff’s department. I used my business line to try to track down Sylvia Bevans.

Chapter 13

While we were on the phone, Julian insisted on doing the dishes. I tapped the counter impatiently. Sylvia now claims The Practical Cook Book is a collector’s item … and André wanted a photocopy of it … Could André really have cared about early twentieth-century American cookery? An answering machine picked up at the Homestead Museum. I hung up and dialed Sylvia’s home. The phone rang and rang. The curator, apparently, did not embrace telecommunications technology.

Charlie Smythe’s handwriting across one of the recipes makes it valuable … so what? To the best of my knowledge, André had never been in the Homestead before Friday. He’d never seen the cookbook, or any recipes therein, had he? Who would know about this? Someone in the Furman County Historical Society? Marla. But I got her machine, too. Was the IRS holding her hostage? I stared glumly at the hole in our back wall as I listened to my yet about the incriminating evidence retrieved from his pickup. There was no way Cameron would have staged the museum burglary and then left the old cookbook in his truck. So where was the fourth cookbook? And who on earth had reason to steal it? I left a message on Marla’s machine asking her to call, and hung up.

Arch announced he and Julian were taking Jake on an evening walk. Did I want to go? The rain had vanished, leaving the air cool and moist. I declined, anxious to hear what Tom was learning from the department. Realistically, what could they tell him? So they found another of the stolen cookbooks? So what? I fidgeted with my iced coffee glass.

“Okay, there’s not much but here it is,” Tom said after twenty minutes of conversation with his departmental cohorts. “Fuller’s guys did find the Watkins Cookbook. No sign of the other cookbook, although they have the photocopies of all four from the Homestead files, and this is the first they’ve heard about the cookbook possibly being a collector’s item. As far as they know, it’s worth less than a hundred bucks. But here’s something more interesting: The department got the tip about Eliot’s body being at Burr’s house just a little more than three hours after my team answered Sylvia’s call about the robbery at the Homestead. So in Fuller’s mind, the whole thing looked like a homicide-masquerading-as-burglary pretty quickly. See what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I think so … that once he decided it was a homicide, you couldn’t think of it as anything else?”

Tom nodded and poured us two cognacs. Well, why not? We’d already splurged on the last of the shrimp, carry-out food, and a loan for a new kitchen. We might as well finish off the Courvoisier. Tom placed a crystal liqueur glass in front of me and continued: “Andy Fuller ordered Burr arrested without taking the time to hear his story, and without a lot of evidence. Burr didn’t have any alibi for that night beyond being drunk. He had brawled with Eliot earlier in the evening, and Eliot’s body was found on Burr’s property. Q.E.D., according to Fuller, who claimed Burr knew when Eliot would be working at the museum, killed him there, then faked the burglary as an inebriated afterthought.”

I sipped the cognac: It was sweet, smoky, and soothing. “Didn’t they ever investigate it as a robbery? Especially with what Sylvia is saying now about the last cookbook being a potentially valuable collector’s item?”

“They don’t put much stock in Sylvia, Miss G.” Tom shook his head. “Fuller had his homicide-not-burglary theory. The department had already recovered the first two cookbooks, and those weren’t very valuable. I mean, we’re not talking the Gutenberg Bible or anything, right? Plus, Sylvia’s original report didn’t even mention all the stolen cookbooks, so they’re reluctant to change their theory now.”

“I hope this is Sylvia’s last term as curator.”

“Patience, Miss G. Her position pays less than fifteen thousand a year. She’s dedicated, but she’s not super-woman. Most of the collection was donated from old-timers in Furman County. The missing cookbook was donated by Leah Smythe, and apparently she’s been completely disinterested in whether it’s found or not.”

“So are you telling me a stolen collector’s item doesn’t hold any weight with the department? It couldn’t be a motive for murder?” I offered Tom another truffle and he bit into it thoughtfully.

“I told Boyd to run a burglary-gone-bad theory by Fuller. But you know the golden boy won’t want his original theory being questioned by a cop on suspension.” Tom went on: “The department is sending somebody up to the museum to talk to Sylvia tomorrow about her call from André regarding that cookbook. Maybe Boyd can get us some inside information.”

“I want to know why he wanted that book,” I insisted. “We’re talking about a French chef who couldn’t have given a flipped pancake for historic American cooking.”

“It may have been his … nosiness, Goldy. Wanting to see what had been stolen.”

“But this is like the burns on his hands,” I objected. “It doesn’t fit. It isn’t the way he was.” I hesitated. “Look, Tom, I need to know what happened to André. If I went up to the cabin, I could poke around a little—”

“You’re not serious,” my husband interrupted gently. Then, knowing me far too well, he added, “Don’t even think about doing that.”

I sipped the last of my cognac and didn’t reply. The boys returned and took Jake up to their room, unaware of Scout stealthily scampering after them up the stairs. Typically, the cat refused to be left out of anything.

A pearly twilight suffused the sky. Swamped with exhaustion, I decided to go to bed. But first I called Lutheran Hospital: How was Barbara Burr? I asked. Stable. And unable to talk, I was told, for the umpteenth time. I hung up and phoned to check on Pru Hibbard. Wanda Cooney said Pru had taken a sedative and was asleep. So much for asking about André’s reasons for wanting a photocopy of a historic cookbook. Wanda added softly that the memorial service for André would be held at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church this Thursday at four o’clock.

The scent of baking bread woke me just before seven the next morning. I checked the thermometer outside our window: sixty degrees. Despite a stiff breeze lashing the trees, Tom slumbered on. I stood at the window and watched shiny puffs of cumulus race across a delft-blue sky. Pools of shadow swiftly followed the clouds’ path on the far mountains. The sound of barking dogs mingled with the hesitant chug of a school bus on a practice round.

I tried to ignore that stunned, painful hope that threatens to drown your common sense the day after a tragedy. Had this really happened? Had I seen Andre’s body at the morgue the previous day? Was he really gone? Yes.

I stretched and breathed through my yoga routine, trying hard to empty my mind and let energy flow in. This was the day of the Soiree tasting competition. I couldn’t have been less in the mood.

While dressing, I wondered if there was anything I could do for Pru today. I’d call her later from the Homestead, where I also wanted to find out about Andre’s request for photocopied recipes. Sylvia and I needed to have a little heart-to-heart … Wait a minute. Heart-to-heart. Need money? Have a heart-to-heart with Leland. With a sinking feeling, I realized I’d completely forgotten to call John Richard’s lawyer-accountant, Hugh Leland, about Arch’s tuition payment at Elk Park Prep. Several rounds of phone tag were corning up on that score, I knew.

I brushed my teeth, combed my hair, put on a minimum of makeup, and attempted to focus on the tasting party. You can worry about your work or you can do your work, André used to lecture. A chef doesn’t have time for both.

The kitchen was chilly because of the missing walls. But this apparently put no damper on Julian, who was up already, zipping energetically from the cluttered counter to the cluttered table and back to the counter. Smiling brightly, his hair neady combed, his young face scrubbed and enthusiastic, he wore a rumply-soft white shirt, dark pants, and a spotless white apron. He gestured for me to sit. With a mischievous look, he set a plate with a single cupcake in front of me. It had an uneven top and a small scoop of frosting for garnish. The eager, approval-seeking expression on his perspiration-filmed face surely mirrored my own, when I’d first offered poppy seed muffins to André.

“What’s wrong?” Julian demanded in a rush. “They’re right from the oven. Miniature bread puddings with hard sauce.”

I cut a mouthful of the crusty, moist cake and spooned up a judicious amount of the hard sauce frosting along with it. The crunchy, caramelized pudding mingled with the smooth, creamy rum sauce. “Delicious,” I pronounced. And it was.

“I even came up with a name,” Julian went on. “Because they’re for Merciful Migrations’ fund-raising? Big Bucks Bread Puddings.” His eyes glowed with pleasure.

“Great.” I glanced around to check Julian’s preparations, resolved to get going cooking. But how on earth could I do that? This was no longer a kitchen; this was a ruin littered with bowls, pans, and foodstuffs. Only half of the upper cabinets remained. The back wall was now utterly gone. Tom had widened the gap over the sink. The place looked like a solarium in ruins. “Lord,” I murmured. “If the health inspector shows up, I’ll be deader than week-old aspic.”

Big Bucks Bread Puddings with Hard Sauce

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

½ cup Demerara sugar (sometimes sold as raw sugar or Hawaiian washed sugar) or granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 cup milk

½ cup whipping cream

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 slices white bread, torn up (9½ ounces)

⅓ cup raisins

Hard Sauce (recipe follows)

12 fresh mint sprigs (optional)

Butter a 12-cup nonstick muffin tin. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

Cream the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar and beat until well combined.

Beat in the eggs, then beat in the milk and cream. Stir in the nutmeg and vanilla. Thoroughly stir in the bread pieces. The mixture will look like mush. Stir in the raisins.

Using a ⅓-cup measure, ladle out a full scoop of batter into each muffin cup. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and, using a non-stick coated spoon, quickly stir each cup of half-risen batter to break up the crust on the sides. Return to the oven for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, or until the puddings are set and browned.

Quickly unmold the puddings on a wire rack and set upright like cupcakes to cool slightly. (The puddings can be served hot, warm, or at room temperature.) Top each pudding with a scoop of Hard Sauce. Using a toothpick, insert the stem of a mint sprig into the top of each scoop of Hard Sauce.

Makes 12 servings

Hard Sauce

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

¼ cup whipping cream (more, if necessary)

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

¼ teaspoon rum extract

Beat together the butter and whipping cream until thoroughly combined. Add the confectioners’ sugar slowly and beat until thoroughly blended. Stir in the rum extract. If the mixture is too stiff, add a little more cream. To serve with bread puddings, chill the mixture until it is easily scooped out. Using a small ice-cream scoop, measure out even scoops of the chilled sauce onto a plate covered with wax paper. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate the scoops until ready to serve.

Any leftover Hard Sauce can be thinned with cream and used to frost cookies or cake.

“No, you’ll just punt,” Julian replied cheerfully. “You want to start on the rest of the appetizers or do you want me to?”

“I’ll do it. I just need some caffeine first.”

“The next batch of puddings will be out in twenty minutes.” He removed the plastic bag of escolar fillets from the walk-in. “I’ll fix you some French-press coffee while you look up exactly how many folks we’re serving today. I still can’t get into your computer. You need to give me your password.” He set water on to boil and ground coffee beans. “By the way, you were right about more than three people coming to the tasting. Sylvia Bevans told me she’d be there, plus a couple of extra women from Mercifull Migrations might show up. Hanna and Leah. How come Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington are so involved in everything in this town?”

“Oh, Julian, they’re old-timers. Their grandfather, Charlie Smythe, was one of Aspen Meadow’s original settlers, and he left his son Vic land-rich. Vic passed the land to his family, and that’s why the daughters are so involved in mountain land preservation.”

“Well,” he said defiantly, “I don’t really care who comes, as long as they vote for our food.” Clearly, he did not want to talk about Weezie Smythe Harrington, the widow of his biological father, Brian Harrington. Julian was no relation, blood or otherwise, to Weezie Harrington, and he avoided my eyes as he poured boiling water over coffee grounds in the press, then set the timer for four minutes.

I said, “I don’t need to check the computer. We’ll probably have six total, up from the original three.” Julian nodded. “Oh, and we’ll be doing Weezie’s birthday-party tomorrow night. You can skip it if you want.”

“No, I’ll do it. So it’s Marla, Weezie, and who else again?”

“Edna Hardcastle. We’re doing her daughter’s wedding reception on Saturday. If we can snag the Soiree assignment, by the time of André’s funeral on Thursday,” I concluded, “we’ll be back in business.” Although how we would prepare the food, I thought, looking around at my mutilated kitchen, the Lord only knew …

“He’ll be there today, won’t he?” Julian asked darkly as he poured me a richly aromatic cup of coffee.

I was startled, thinking he’d read my thoughts. “Who?”

“Litchfield.”

“Oh. Yes. And before you ask, I don’t know what his menu will be.”

We set to work in earnest. The dinner was advertised as a five-hundred-dollar-a-plate champagne dinner for thirty. The relatively intimate number of diners was all the historical society could fit into the Homestead dining room. County law forbidding liquor on government property had been waived for the one evening. Thankfully, the champagne and other wines would be supplied gratis by a member of the historical society. Expensive buffets could quickly turn into pig troughs, so I was glad the historical society wanted a seated dinner and large—but controlled—portions. Even better, the society was paying the winning caterer seventy dollars a plate. With any luck, if I won the tasting today, I could buy supplies, amply remunerate Julian, and still clear forty bucks per person to make the first payment on Arch’s tuition. Just in case The Jerk or his lawyer-accountant forgot.

I savored the coffee and studied the menu Julian and I had decided on. We had enough for eight tasters, following Andre’s cardinal rule to bring enough for your planned group plus two. For appetizers we were serving Julia Child’s stuffed mushrooms, artichoke hearts roasted with a mayonnaise-Parmesan mixture, and hot herbed shrimp wrapped in crisp bacon strips. These would all go beautifully with champagne. The main course consisted of a choice of the grilled escolar, polenta, and salsa, or pork tenderloin with Cumberland sauce, and Yukon gold potatoes mashed with cream and roasted garlic. Both meat offerings would be served with baked garden tomatoes stuffed with asparagus and buttered bread crumbs, Caesar salad, and rolls. This would be followed by the white chocolate-dipped truffles and/or Julian’s Big Bucks Bread Puddings, served with Vienna Roast coffee. Sounded like a winner to me.

Julian had made the salsa along with the polenta and stuffed a dozen mushrooms the evening before. I snipped bacon strips into quarters and slid them into the hot oven. For the tomatoes, I lightly steamed the asparagus and started buttering bread crumbs. Once I’d stuffed eight tomatoes, I whipped together an eggless Caesar dressing and washed and dried all the greens. By the time Tom came down an hour later, Julian and I had finished the preparation and were packed and ready to boogie.

“Please don’t do any more tearing apart,” I begged Tom, who wore old work clothes. “And please, please clean up what you’ve done.”

Tom hugged me. “Just go win your party.”

Main Street was thick with the last wave of summer tourists. Shoppers rushed into boutiques selling candles embedded with aspen leaves, wooden lamps carved into the shapes of giant squirrels, and wind chimes purportedly fashioned of genuine Colorado silver. A queue of men waited for the first beer of the day outside the Grizzly Saloon. Julian sat beside me, his face intent with worry. I hooked a left onto Homestead Drive and gunned the engine.

“It’s going to be okay,” I assured him, feigning confidence. “No matter how it comes out. Especially after all that’s happened … please, Julian. Listen. I couldn’t have gotten this far without you. I’m very appreciative of your help.”

“Thank me when you get the booking.”

Sylvia Bevans trundled out the museum’s service door just as we began to unpack the van. She wore a lace-trimmed powder-blue linen suit and squat powder-blue heels. “We were very upset to hear about André,” she announced, her voice quavering. Her pale, rheumy eyes regarded me as I heaved up a box. “I know you must be devastated.”

“He was my teacher, Sylvia.”

“Yes. Well, life does go on, doesn’t it?” Her dismissive wave said: Back to work, no time to grieve. Well, we would see about that.

“You mentioned to Julian that André wanted a photocopy of a cookbook.”

“Yes, Goldy, but he never came to get it.” She exhaled impatiently. “You don’t suppose the little episode André had here in the museum contributed to his demise, do you?”

“Sylvia, I don’t know.” I handed Julian a box. “Sometimes severe heart attacks are preceded by mild ones.”

She sniffed. Then, insincerely, she added, “I am sorry we couldn’t cancel the tasting because of Andre’s death. It would have been more respectfull. But the next time these busy women could all meet together was after the Soirée had taken place. Now please pay attention, Goldy, I must tell you about the events of the morning. Edna Hardcastle and Weezie Harrington have arrived. Marla Korman has not. Also, your competitor is here.” She indicated the brand-new cream-colored Upscale Appetite van by the kitchen door. She pursed her mouth and reconsidered. “And you can tell that husband of yours that the sheriff’s department refuses to discuss The Practical Cook Book.” She marched away as Julian returned.

He opened his eyes wide. “She didn’t seem happy.”

I hoisted the platter of bread puddings. “She never does.”

Once we’d hauled our cache into the Homestead kitchen, Julian busied himself with the grill while I set about unpacking the foodstuffs, or trying to. Unfortunately, Upscale Appetite bags, boxes, and platters occupied ninety percent of the available counterspace. Craig Litchfield—dressed today in star-patterned pants and a dapper tan chef’s jacket—swaggered in from the dining room. He refused to acknowledge my presence.

“Excuse me,” I said stiffly. He did not respond. “Please,” I tried again, “could you move some of your stuff? We need a bit of space.”

“We? I thought this was supposed to be a solo operation for both of us. How many helpers did you bring?”

“Just one. And no one told me we had to work alone.”

He scowled disapprovingly, but said nothing, as if he couldn’t be bothered to scold me for a gross infraction of rules every real caterer already knew. Then he pulled a sheet of diagonally sliced egg rolls out of the oven and slithered through the door to the dining room. They looked good. I glanced down at my watch: just after ten o’clock. We weren’t supposed to begin serving until eleven-thirty. What was he doing? And where was the committee?

As if in answer, the lilting voices of Weezie Harrington and Edna Hardcastle floated out to the kitchen.

“Oh, yum! Craig, you doll!” cried Weezie. “You’re going to put this recipe in the newspaper? Fantastic!”

Doggone it. I wedged my greens into the crowded refrigerator. Why was Marla not here at the Homestead with her committee? And what was I supposed to do: appear empty-handed in the dining room ninety minutes before serving time? I glared at a framed article on the dingy kitchen wall. It was a July 1915 issue of the New York Times proclaiming that gunmen had held up a Yellowstone stagecoach. I sighed and forced myself to put on a cheery visage as I walked into the dining room.

Edna Hardcastle, her tight curls as gray as the inside of an aluminum pot, wore a red-checked pantsuit and red-and-white spectator pumps. She held a glass of fizzy champagne aloft. For some reason, my entry made her glance guiltily at the tray of flutes on the sideboard.

“Oh, Goldy, here you are, finally,” cooed Weezie Harrington, brandishing an egg roll. In her early forties, with a trim body and dyed blond hair zinging out in improbable waves, Weezie wore a trio of thin gold necklaces, a tailored lemon-yellow blouse, navy shorts, and navy flats with perky bows. “So glad to see you.” She giggled. “And to see this.” When she snagged a champagne flute from the tray proffered by Craig Litchfield, the enormous diamond ring on her left hand threw off a huge beam of light. What was going on with the booze? Not only was the champagne illegal—this was government property, after all, and our dispensation to serve wine was only good the night of the Soiree itself—but drinking was strictly banned under the terms of our tasting party. Craig Litchfield whisked past and set his tray down. I looked to Sylvia Bevans for direction, but she was showing Edna Hardcastle the damage to the display cases wrought by Gerald Eliot’s killer.

“Hello, everybody!” called Leah Smythe as she breezed in. Unlike the preppily dressed committee members, Leah wore black pedal pushers, a black shell, and large, modernistic silver jewelry. She fluffed her streaked coal-and-gold hair with one hand and dropped her oversized leather sac on the floor. Tall, blond Yvonne, the model I’d last seen a week ago at the first P & G fashion shoot, hovered behind her.

“Check out Yvonne’s shirt, ladies!” Leah exclaimed as she stepped to one side and pointed theatrically. One thing I had begun to wonder about models: Didn’t they have last names? I’d met Rustine, Bobby, Peter, and Yvonne, and the only last name I’d heard was Whitaker, for Bobby. Yvonne mutely cocked a narrow hip and lofted an arm to better show her forest green sweatshirt. Leah declared, “We’re going to sell them at the door. Catchy, no?” The shirt was emblazoned with the white silhouette of a buck elk’s horned head and the phrase Lawrence Elk Loves The Bubbly!

Craig Litchfield jumped in with: “Oh, my God, that’s the best-looking sweatshirt I’ve ever seen.”

Weezie touched her sister’s arm. “You are too creative, Leah,” she gushed. “People will snap them up.”

Edna frowned. “How much will they cost? Will the Welk people sue us? Or demand a cut?”

“Sue us?” said Leah. She winked at her sister. “For what?”

Sylvia Bevans turned to Craig Litchfield and me. “I believe we’re ready to start,” she said frostily. Litchfield grinned, lifted his chin, and shook his shoulders, like a runner eager to start the race.

“Wait a minute.” I pressed my sweaty palms on my apron. “Marla Korman is this committee’s chairperson. The tasting isn’t supposed to start for another hour. She would want us to wait for her. Not only that,” I added boldly, “but no wines were to be served.”

Weezie waved this off. “Goldy, look. We all know Marla’s your friend, but hey, the poor dear’s in an audit. Lord knows when those IRS people will let her go. And we’ve just started drinking a tad of champagne, to celebrate.” She giggled again, then held up the hand with the diamond ring.

“Celebrate what?” I asked, but she ignored me.

“Marla will be along,” Edna Hardcastle said sweetly, adjusting the belt on her red suit. She looked slightly apologetic. “We know it’s early. We’ll make allowances for that.”

“But we have to wait for Marla,” I said stubbornly.

Sylvia Bevans moved so close to me I could smell her lavender talcum powder. “I don’t know when Marla is coming, Goldy. I only know this party has already been postponed once because of you, and the other chef who was supposed to come is dead. We’ve got a group of fourth graders coming at one o’clock and you need to be out by then. We must stop talking and get cracking. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Sylvia,” I said in my most placating tone. “Absolutely.” I glanced at Craig Litchfield’s confident smirk, then wished I had not.

I sailed back to the kitchen and out the service entrance.

“Julian, forget the grill,” I said tersely. “They’re starting now. We’ll have to broil the fish and not serve the polenta.”

Julian swallowed a curse and tossed water on the smoky coals to put out the fire. Like me, he’d learned that in food and client situations, argument is fruitless.

Unfortunately, the tasting did not go well. The mushrooms were barely warm, not hot, as the Homestead oven labored to heat my pans as well as Litchfield’s. Broiled, the escolar was quite good, but absent the succulent grilled flavor, it merely tasted like high-quality fish. I’d had to turn the oven up to the highest temperature to kill any bacteria in the pork, and the result was dry, rather than juicy and tender.

And yet, although my meats were not as tasty as I would have liked, I was certain they beat Craig Litchfield’s braised salmon, stir-fried scallops with green peppers, eggplant and rice pilaf, and avocado salad. Many people do not eat salmon or scallops, and even Arch got indigestion from bell peppers. Surely the committee had to be mindful of food allergies?

By the time Marla finally showed up, we were halfway through the main course.

“Marla, you scamp!” squawked Weezie. “Are you starved, darling? Or does being audited make you lose your appetite?”

Marla complained that they had started the tasting early. Unfortunately, she was still sporting her gray housedress, and lacked the authority of power clothing. She did not dare look at me, nor I at her. Although the tasting was supposed to be silent, Edna and Weezie kept telling Craig Litchfield how cute he was.

At twelve-thirty, Julian took out the tray of bread puddings. To my chagrin, I realized I’d forgotten the truffles. Litchfield offered a low-fat lime dessert. While the women all were duty-bound to try both desserts, all except Marla gobbled the lime and only took small bites of the luxurious pudding. And Marla, of course, should not have been eating that. But I could tell she was remorseful—for not coming earlier, for wearing her Minnie Pearl outfit, and for sending elk burgers to the head of Merciful Migrations.

“It’s over,” Julian informed me glumly when he brought the barely touched pudding tray out to the kitchen. “They don’t even want coffee.”

Craig Litchfield, triumphant and glowing, lofted his empty bowl of lime glop and swiftly packed up his serving platters. Before Julian and I had begun to gather our dishes, Litchfield was gone, claiming over his shoulder that he had a “huge” job at the country club and much as he longed to, couldn’t stay to chat. Yakking gaily, Edna, Leah Smythe, and Yvonne departed by the front door. The tasting had been a disaster.

“Sit down, Goldy,” Julian commanded. “Let me finish taking the boxes out. You look like hell.”

“Thanks, but I’ll work,” I replied as I rinsed off the pork roasting pan. I tried to console myself with the thought that even if we’d lost this booking, we still had Weezie’s party and Edna’s reception.

Marla hustled breathlessly into the kitchen. “God, I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. She hugged me, and I was reminded once again that her current austerity program did not include deodorant. “We make the decision by conference call later in the week. You know I’ll call you. I’m sure you’ll get it.”

“It’s okay,” I said stoically.

“You know about Weezie?” she asked tentatively. “You know who’s picking her up?”

“She’s celebrating something,” I replied dully. “And no, I don’t know who’s picking her up.”

“Better come look out the dining room window.”

Marla and I went back to the dining room and peered through the wavy glass. A dark Furman County government car had pulled in front of the museum. Weezie ran out to it as a short man with strawberry-blond hair emerged from the car. The two embraced. The man was Assistant District Attorney Andy Fuller.

“Don’t tell me,” I said to Marla, my eyes fixed on the embracing duo.

“The day Gerald Eliot’s body was found? Fuller and Weezie got engaged.”

Chapter 14

I walked quickly to the kitchen and scrubbed viciously at the scarred countertops. Why hadn’t Weezie told me about her engagement? Perhaps she thought I knew. Maybe she didn’t like me anymore; maybe I was just being paranoid. After all, I was catering her birthday party the next day. Still, you’d think she would have mentioned her upcoming nuptials, if only to refer to catering the wedding reception….

“I’m sorry,” Marla murmured.

“Me, too,” said Julian.

“I doubt Andy Fuller has any say over who caters the Soiree,” I said unconvincingly. I looked at Marla’s sad, round face and Julian’s square-jawed, stoic expression. “Will you two quit?” I demanded. I grabbed the platter of puddings. “I’m going to tell the museum people we’re leaving.” I rushed out of the kitchen, desperate to be away from them and their pity.

The dining room was empty except for a couple of dirty champagne glasses. I passed the living-room fire place where Santa and the child models had posed so unhappily, and arrived at the doorway to the historical society office.

“Hi,” I said brightly to a volunteer worker with buckteeth and loopy brunette curls. Four plump mixed-breed dogs lay coiled on the floor. The canines scrabbled to their feet at the sound of my voice and wagged happy tails. A plastic gate barred the entrance of the office. Probably this was to keep the dogs from wandering through the museum. “Uh,” I said, and offered the volunteer the leftover puddings, “I’m Goldy, one of the caterers from the party. These are for you.”

The woman spoke lovingly to her dogs. Denied immediate access to dessert, all four grunted and flopped around her desk. “Thanks, nice to meet you.” She bit into a pudding and looked ruefully down at her pets. “Mm-mw. Sorry about my sweethearts here. Sylvia puts up with them so I’ll come in and do her paperwork.”

“My helper and I just wanted to let you know we’re leaving.”

“Okay! I’m Annie,” she said brightly. “The back door is self-locking. Sylvia is out talking to a group of fourth graders in the parking lot, or I know she’d be in here thanking you.” She munched the pudding. “Did I ever need a break! This is super! Here, sweeties, taste this yummy treat.” The four canines scrambled to their feet. At least someone was eager to sample my cooking, I thought bitterly, then scolded myself for being a bad loser.

“Well, good.” If she needed a break, maybe she wanted to have a chat. “So … what kind of work do you do here?”

“Oh,” Annie replied in a friendly tone, “writing letters asking for money. Sometimes asking for a historical item.” She shared another cupcake-sized pudding with her dogs as she talked. Sylvia would have a stroke when she saw the mess the food was making on the floor. “Or answering a question about one.”

“Really! I catered here last Friday—”

“With the chef who had the heart attack! Were you close?” Her breath whistled between her gaping teeth.

“We knew each other,” I replied noncommittally. “Actually, I’m friends with the Burrs, too. I just … can’t accept that Cameron strangled Gerald Eliot here, just because Gerald was behind on a remodeling. It’s not the kind of thing you think of the president of a historical society doing.”

“Oh, I know, no way.” The shiny bark-colored curls flapped as she shook her head. “Old Cameron has a temper, that is true. I’ve seen him lose it at historical society meetings enough. And I guess he and Gerald could have broken the exhibit cases when they were fighting. But why would Cameron ruin display cases that he’d donated to the museum?”

“To make it look as if he didn’t do it?”

She shrugged skeptically. We both hesitated. I leaned back on a closet, trying to appear relaxed. In truth I was tense about being once again in the gray area between interest and nosiness. There was an item I wanted, and I didn’t know how convincing a lie I could develop on short notice to get it. “Since you mention André, the chef who died, I was wondering about something he mentioned … a photocopy of The Practical Cook Book? The reason I’m asking is that … I’m doing a party tomorrow for a member of the historical society. So I need to troll for authentic historic recipes. Any chance you’d let me borrow the photocopied version of The Practical Cook Book? To get ideas?”

“Well …” Annie cocked her head and gave me a doubtful look. “I’m really not supposed to let a whole facsimile go out, although Sylvia was going to make an exception for André. We could wait to ask her. But I don’t know how long that would take. If you told me a recipe or two you liked, maybe I could help you—”

Ah, bureaucrats. “No, that’s okay,” I interjected as I backed away from the half-gate. The four overweight dogs watched me greedily, perhaps hoping I’d accidentally drop a bread pudding. “I’ll just go to the library,” I tossed over my shoulder to Annie. Of course, I had no intention of doing any such thing.

“Isn’t this pudding to die for, sweeties?” I heard Annie call cheerfully as I departed.

When Tom heard us drive in, he put his special crumb-covered crab cakes into the oven. As soon as we had our boxes unpacked and ourselves cleaned up, we were digging into hot, crispy, divinely spicy little cakes. I said a prayer of thanks that I had such a wonderfull husband … and that fish, owing to a doctor’s warning that he wasn’t getting close to enough protein, was now occasionally included in Julian’s diet. We raved over the crab cakes and had seconds. I stretched the truth and said the tasting party hadn’t been too bad. Just as I was actually beginning to forget the wretched day I’d had, however, the lights flickered, went out, then flickered on again. Tom announced he had to check the fuses. He’d been working on the kitchen’s electrical outlets during the day, he told us cheerfully.

I rinsed our dishes and told Julian he had to take a break. What I didn’t say was that if he wanted to cure the loneliness he’d felt so keenly in college, he needed to go out and make friends. Hopefully friends of the female variety. Thanks to my experience with Arch, however, I’d learned long ago not to give advice to young people. The lights flickered and went out. Great. I wondered how we’d manage to prep Weezie’s party in the morning without electricity.

The lights came back on. Then they went out again. “It’s okay!” Tom called from the basement. “I’ve turned the power off!”

“No problem!” I called back cheerily, then groaned.

“Where’s Arch?” Julian asked. He glanced anxiously around the kitchen space, as if he couldn’t bear a moment with nothing to do.

“In town,” Tom supplied as he returned with a handful of tools. He frowned at the first set of electrical outlets. “Having hot dogs with a couple of eighth graders in front of the Grizzly Saloon. If you’re wanting company, they’d probably enjoy chatting with a college student.”

“Tom,” I reprimanded when Julian banged out the front door. “That wasn’t very sensitive.”

He put down his screwdriver and frowned at the outlet. “Sorry. But the kid has to kick back a litlle. AU he does is work, with occasional bursts of so-called relaxation when he swims a hundred laps all by his lonesome. I only said he should walk into town and maybe meet up with Arch. It’ll be good for him. Besides, I need to talk to you.”

“We do need to talk,” I agreed. I pulled unsalted butter and eggs out of the dark refrigerator. “But I lied about the electricity being no problem. If you’re done with those outlets, I need you to turn the power back on so I can make Weezie’s birthday cake.”

To avoid another disagreement, he trundled off silently to do as bidden. The lights blinked back on as I readied my recipe for orange poppy seed cake, Weezie’s favorite.

On his return, Tom pulled out a metal tape measure and extended it across the floor with a clinging thwack.

“Speaking of lying,” I said casually, “how did the polygraph go?”

“Ah, so you ferreted that out. Well, don’t know yet about the results. But I did speak to Sheila about the autopsy. Looks like André somehow burned himself, had some chest pain, then took an overdose of his nitroglycerin, maybe because he was confused. Apparently, he was extremely sensitive to the nitro. I know you know how nitroglycerin works, opens the blood vessels to the heart. He took too much and his blood pressure crashed. The cops interviewed the photo people. Everyone at Ian’s Images feels bad. They claim to have loved André.”

“Right.” But of course none of this was right. On Friday, the paramedics had mentioned that André’s sensitivity to his medication had made him reluctant to take any, even at the first sign of symptoms. On the other hand, maybe these symptoms had been much worse, and he had indeed become confused…. “What caused the burn marks?” I asked.

Tom snapped the measure; it slithered back into its chrome housing. “The guys who secured the scene couldn’t find a pan or burner that exactly matched the curve of the burns on André’s hands. They found his empty bottle of medication. But there’s no indication of foul play, and it’s not a suspicious death. So they’re not going to pursue it.” He cracked the tape across the floor the other way. “End of story.”

I sifted flour and shook my head. “Come on, Tom. On Friday André’s his usual temperamental self. The following Monday he uncharacteristically burns himself with no-one-knows-what, then takes an overdose of a medication to which he knows he’s extremely sensitive? And Sheila says that’s the end of the story?” I set the beater to whip the egg whites. Delicately scented strands of orange zest curled onto my cutting board as I reminded myself that Tom was not the enemy.

He finished his measuring and scribbled numbers into his trusty spiral notebook. “Sheila’s not done, of course, but she’s probably going to rule the death an accident. They’ve put one investigator on it and he agrees.” He pocketed his measure and notebook and enclosed me in a bear hug. “I thought you should know. I’m not saying it’s right.”

“Well, it isn’t.”

As he traipsed back down into the depths of the basement, I scraped the light, seed-specked batter into a buttered pan and set it in the oven. The kitchen clock indicated it was exactly four o’clock. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached for the phone and punched in the number of the morgue. I counted it a blessing that I was only put on hold four times while waiting to get through to Sheila O’Connor.

“Listen,” I began breathlessly after identifying myself. “André was extremely careful about his pills. And I think it’s really odd that he would have burned himself—”

“Goldy, please. You always think that something’s suspicious—”

“No, please,” I interrupted, although I knew Sheila’s scenario of burn, symptoms, overdose, hypotension, death, was not impossible. I took a deep breath. “I was at a tasting party today, a contest between caterers for a big booking. André was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t, of course. He probably would have won. The other caterer, Craig Litchfield, is a real scumbag.”

“Goldy, I’m not the one—”

I took another steadying breath, inhaling the tart-sweet orange scent, and ordered myself to be patient. “But you are the one, Sheila. If you rule Andre’s death an accident, no one at the department will do anything. Tom’s not allowed to poke around. He certainly doesn’t want me to go out to the cabin to nose around the kitchen—”

“You’d better not,” she cautioned.

“So when was the last time anyone out at the cabin saw André alive?”

“Friday. André called Rufus Driggle on Sunday night and asked to be let in early to do some prep work. Rufus opened the gate for him at about seven, and then left to get film. The cabdriver confirms the gate was open when they arrived. When Rufus came back at nine, André was already dead.”

“And Pru didn’t tell you he’d burned himself over the weekend?”

“Nope. I asked her specifically.”

“Is anybody at Ian’s Images admitting they were out at the cabin early Monday?”

“No.”

“All right then, listen to this,” I went on urgently. “Within an hour of Pru leaving the morgue, Craig Litchfield practically broke down her door, trying to buy André’s client list and recipe book. The guy is bad news, Sheila. I wouldn’t put anything past him. Where was Litchfield early Monday morning when André died? Has anybody asked?”

“Goldy, look. I like you and trust you. So I’m going to tell you that Craig Litchfield called Andy Fuller yesterday and complained that you should be investigated. I only know because Andy ran it by me. I told him it was nonsense, just sour grapes from one of your competitors. But Litchfield said you can’t deal with competition. He told Andy about some incident with a cake plate?” I groaned. “Litchfield claims you were at the Hibbard house yourself trying to get the clients and the recipes, and that you knew Andre’s schedule, so you had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill him.”

Stunned, I was speechless for a moment. “Sheila, you know I went to be with Pru. And André’s always given me all the recipes I’ve ever asked for. Fuller can’t, the department can’t—”

“Of course not, and that’s exactly what I told him. But you see how it looks. So if you’d rather not be investigated as the leading suspect in a homicide case, you’d better let me close the books on André Hibbard’s death as an accidental overdose of nitroglycerin. An accidental death, Goldy,” she said meaningfully. “Now, please, I have a ton of work. I have to go.” She hung up.

I cursed silently and stared at the kitchen timer as it ticked down to the cake being done. Think, I told myself. First Gerald Eliot, then André. You don’t just have two unexplained deaths like this, with so many connections and yet no connections….

The cake was almost done; the oven would still be hot; I decided to make us an early dinner. Anyway, I thought better when I cooked. How about a rich Mexican torte layered with chiles, Fontina cheese, and tortillas—a creamy entrée even a vegetarian could love? I grated cheese and chopped chiles, and as I did, I reconstructed what I knew.

Gerald Eliot had been doing his usual on-again, off-again remodeling work at the Merciful Migrations cabin. And for Cameron Burr. And for me. Supposedly, he’d been having an affair with the one-name model, Rus tine. And he had been working as a security guard at the museum, where he’d been killed, and from where his body had been moved. There had been a burglary at the museum. Or had there? Annie-the-volunteer-secretary had insisted Cameron Burr wouldn’t have made it look as if a burglary had occurred, when his real motive was murder.

I beat eggs with half-and-half I didn’t know what the motive was, didn’t even know which crime had come first, the murder or the burglary. Nor did I know how the strange death of André—who’d incomprehensibly asked for a copy of the one cookbook that had been stolen and was still missing—was related to either. But I owed it to André to answer all these questions. If only I could snoop around at that damn cabin! But I couldn’t, at least not yet. Right now, the only thing that might help would be to have a look at some evidence, or facsimiles of evidence. I slid the cake out, turned the temperature down slightly, put the torte in, and set the timer for forty minutes. Then I ran upstairs to get the white gloves I’d bought to wear to Arch’s confirmation.

It shouldn’t take me that long to break into the museum, I reflected as I hustled out to the van with the gloves tucked in my pocket. After all, they no longer had a security guard. And because that very afternoon, after the tasting, I’d duct-taped over the Homestead kitchen door’s so-called self-locking mechanism.

The museum closed at five, so the parking lot was predictably empty. Still, I exhaled in relief. I pushed open the door I’d rigged and strode purposefully into the kitchen, trying not to think of what Tom would say if he knew what I was doing. My story, just in case I was caught, was that I’d left a baking pan in the kitchen. Which I had, just before I’d taped the door.

Tom had told me that the forcible entry on the night of Gerald Eliot‘s death had been through the front door, which opened onto a reception area adjoining the octagonal living area, at the opposite end of the museum. Wouldn’t the president of the historical society have had keys to that door? Maybe, maybe not, since the museum was government property. On the other hand, the president of the historical society would certainly have figured out how to break through the kitchen, wouldn’t he? I didn’t know. Nor did I know whether the intruder had been deliberately lying in wait for Gerald Eliot to make his rounds, as Andy Fuller contended. Was it possible Gerald surprised someone in the middle of a burglary?

I trotted into the dining room. This was where the struggle and strangling had taken place. I looked carefully past the police ribbons. Tiny shards of glass were still visible in the doorframes of the two violated display cases.

My watch indicated I’d been away from the house for fifteen minutes. In my mind’s eye, the rich, creamy custard in our oven began to puff. The cookbooks … Where was the photocopy Sylvia had made for André from the files? No telling. And why would he want it, anyway? Wasn’t what was valuable the cookbook itself?

Well. I knew enough from working as a docent here that it was possible to find what I wanted. And what I wanted was what André had requested, although I didn’t have a clue why he’d requested it. I walked quickly to the historical society office, which smelled distinctly of dog, and scrutinized the four file cabinets.

Correspondence between the historical society and donors, government officials, and teachers was filed by years. Each drawer of the cabinets nearest the wall contained three years of correspondence. No help there. I headed to the other file cabinets, and was immediately rewarded for my efforts by tabs for Acquisition Files: Permanent Collection.

Unfortunately, each of the files within the drawers was labeled only by series of numbers. I pulled out one and read that 90.12.3 was a Hopi basket plaque acquired in 1990; 90.14.6 was apparently a Colt revolver donated in 1990. I pulled all the drawers open: all filed by number. I had no idea when The Practical Cook Book had been given to the museum. And there was no way I would be able to go through all these files, even if I stayed all night.

My eyes locked on Annie’s computer. As a docent, I’d never used it. But if a cross-reference for the files existed, the museum staff would surely enter it into the computer, wouldn’t they? On the other hand, Sylvia didn’t strike me as the data-processing type; maybe she left it all to Annie. I pressed buttons to boot the computer up, held my breath, then clicked on Permanent Collection. No password! That would teach them. I entered a word-search for cookbook.

The permanent collection contained twenty-three historic cookbooks. Ten of them, plus the letters from the German-American Society and from Charlie Smythe while he was incarcerated in Leavenworth, had been in the cookbook exhibit. I clicked on The Practical Cook Book by Elizabeth Hiller, and read rapidly through the accession sheet’s description: Brown cloth-bound volume with dark brown lettering; the owner’s name and the year—Winnie Smythe, 1914—inscribed on the title page. Note from husband on second page. The measurements and overall good condition of the book and its heavily yellowed pages were scrupulously noted, including letters of the alphabet written randomly in brown ink.

The book had been donated in 1975 along with letters and other items from the old Smythe cabin, now headquarters for Merciful Migrations. At the bottom of the accession sheet was the name of the donor: Leah Smythe.

The computer file itself was made up of two pages: the accession sheet and a list of items found in what the museum called the object file. In the object file, I read, I’d find a photo of the book, photocopy of the pages, and a photocopy of a letter written from Charles Smythe to his wife from Leavenworth in 1916, mentioning the cookbook. Had I found pay dirt? Or was I on a wild-goose chase for a book dumped by Gerald Eliot’s killer somewhere the police hadn’t found yet? Why had André requested this cookbook? And why, two days later, had he ended up dead? Was there a connection?

The cookbook’s accession number was PC—1975.011.001a. I grabbed a ballpoint, scribbled the number on a piece of paper, and shut down the computer.

I flipped through the accessions for 1975 and came upon the thick file for 75.011.001a. I checked my watch: the torte needed to be out of the oven in ten minutes. I yanked the cookbook file out of the cabinet, slammed the drawer shut, and raced to the museum exit. Before leaving, I glanced at my decoy baking pan on the kitchen table. Should I take it? Perspiration dampened my face. What about the duct tape on the door’s self-locking mechanism? I riffled the photocopies in my hand. The hundred sixty pages of the small cookbook had been copied as double pages; the whole file looked as if it contained less than a hundred pages. I closed the un locked door, trotted out to my van, and revved up the engine. I would shoot to the library and photocopy the file, bring it back, and pull the tape off the back door at the same time. Before going to the library, though, I needed to zip home, to take my torte out of the oven before it burned to a crisp.

Cooking puts such unfortunate constraints on criminal behavior.

Chapter 15

Jake howled a greeting as my van crunched into our driveway. I tucked the stolen file under my arm and prayed that Tom hadn’t noticed my absence. I also hoped he wouldn’t be there to ask what I was toting.

The heavenly smell of hot Mexican food greeted my entry through the plastic sheeting covering the hole that used to be our back door. The golden-brown cheese torte steamed on a rack on a cluttered countertop. Julian, who’d undoubtedly taken out the dish, was now gallantly offering a ceramic platter of crudités to none other than Rustine. I was so surprised at the sight of the model, I almost dropped the purloined folder.

She sat serenely at our kitchen table, her chestnut ponytail loosened to soft waves that fell just to the straps of her black sport bra. She appraised a hillock of glistening grated daikon on the platter Julian offered her. When she crossed her legs, her skintight black leggings made a silky, rustling sound. I gripped the file and tried to look delighted that Julian was making friends. The former lover of Gerald Eliot, no less, although she probably wasn’t in the mood to chat about that.

“Hey, there …” I faltered. “Welcome, Rustine. Julian? Thanks for saving the torte.” When he nodded, I asked, “Any idea where Arch is?”

“He’s with my sister Lettie on your front porch,” Rustine supplied smoothly, before Julian had a chance to answer. “Lettie and your son and I all go to Elk Park Prep, as it turns out.”

“How nice,” I murmured inanely.

“It was okay, wasn’t it?” mumbled Julian. His brown eyes crinkled in puzzlement. “Bringing people home?”

“Of course.” I was aware that Rustine was staring at me. Did I look as if I’d just committed a burglary? I wondered if any of the identifying numbers on the file tucked under my arm were visible. “So,” I asked her, too brightly, “you all just ran into each other?”

“Yep.” Rustine lifted a tiny handful of Julian’s meticulously grated carrots and inspected it.

“Are you looking forward to school starting?” I asked politely.

“Not really.” She popped the carrot shreds into her mouth and munched thoughtfully. “Our dad is supposed to get back from Alaska right after Labor Day, so the only thing Lettie and I are looking forward to is seeing him. We’ve been so busy with the shoot we haven’t been able to think about much else.”

“We’ve been so busy with the shoot?” I prompted.

Rustine shrugged. “Lettie models, too.”

Julian plunged in with: “Rustine thinks Goldilocks’ Catering might be able to book the rest of the Christmas catalog shoot. She said Litchfield’s already been out to the cabin, nosing around to pick up the assignment. Why don’t you sit down, Goldy, have some coffee with us?”

I headed across my wrecked kitchen, stepping over a hammer, two saws, and a nail gun abandoned on the floor. Cater the rest of the shoot where my teacher just died? No thanks. Julian sprang up beside the espresso machine. I said, “I’d love some coffee. I’ll be back in a sec.”

“We should call Ian or Leah just as soon as possible, Rustine says,” Julian persisted. “Want me to get a bid together? For the photo shoot?”

I stopped in the kitchen doorway, still clutching the file. Wait a minute. Litchfield had been out there. I gave Rustine a sharp look. “When exactly did Craig Litchfield go out to the Merciful Migrations cabin?”

She bent back her slender wrist in nonchalance. “Late afternoon, yesterday.” I calculated: Litchfield had gone from Andre’s condo, where he’d confronted me, directly to the cabin? Rustine went on, “Leah told me this other caterer named Litchfield offered to fix hors d’oeuvre to serve at the end ofthat day’s shooting.”

“And did he?”

She flicked a wisp of carrot off her fingertip with her tongue, then nodded. “Ian had had to send Rufus in for sub sandwiches, and they weren’t very good, so Leah told Litchfield he could heat up whatever he wanted. They were just egg rolls and spinach turnovers, but everybody liked them.” She chewed the strand of carrot. “Leah thinks Litchfield’s really cute. She offered to give him an audition for the cruise section. But it would be great if you guys did the food. Your stuff was better.”

Julian raised his eyebrows. “So, Goldy, should I put a contract together for coffee breaks and lunches for Prince and Grogan? They should be shooting through Labor Day.” He twinkled as he mouthed: More work.

“We already have catering jobs for this week,” I replied matter-of-factly. “There’ll be a huge amount to do that will take up most of our time.” I fidgeted and gripped the file. Upstairs, I could hear Tom’s low tones: He was probably on the phone. I hated to feel on the spot, but here I was. Plus, had Rustine and Julian really just run into each other in town? Why the sudden urge to have us cater at the site where my teacher had died? Did I really want this chance to be out there, as I’d thought half an hour ago?

“Whatever feels right to you. But as I said, your stuff was better,” Rustine commented sweetly, and turned her smile back to Julian.

“I’ll think about it,” I muttered before heading down the hall. I pulled open the drawer of Tom’s antique buffet and dumped the Homestead file inside, then stepped out the front door.

On our porch swing, my son was sitting next to an impossibly lovely blond girl dressed in a navy blue shirt and shorts. Freckles splashed over her tanned cheeks as she chatted brightly, blinked thickly lashed eyes, and twirled a French braid dotted with tiny navy blue bows. Arch sat beside her, entranced. I teetered, wondering briefly about the availability of shock medication. Arch glanced up when he felt my presence. Crimson flooded his cheeks.

“Oops—Sorry.” I cleared my throat. Lettie turned enormous questioning eyes to me. Good Lord, she was pretty. “I’m Arch’s mom. Would you two like some lemonade?”

Arch’s expression turned instantly thunderous. Miss Sparkle-Plenty scuffed at the porch floor with the toe of her sandal and gave the swing a forceful nudge. “Sure. Can you make lemonade with artificial sweetener?”

“Absolutely.” Would a snack be appropriate so close to dinner? Should I invite Lettie and Rustine to stay for dinner? When did the library close? I tried to think. Arch caught my hesitation.

“You can go now, Mom.”

Ten minutes later, a cowardly mother to the core, I sent Julian to the porch with a pitcher of lemonade and a platter of chilled poached shrimp with cocktail sauce. I averted my eyes while mixing more lemon juice with generic aspartame, and invited Rustine and her sister to dinner. Rustine replied that they could stay, if the two of them could only have shrimp and salad. She was scheduled to model on Friday. She and her sister needed to watch their figures, she reminded me. And what do you think Arch and Julian are doing, I couldn’t help thinking, but asked instead, “How long has your dad been in Alaska?”

“Since mid-July,” she said. “He’s looking for a job in Juneau. I’ve been taking care of Lettie. Our mom lives in Florida with her new family.”

“And … will you both withdraw from Elk Park Prep if your dad finds work in Alaska?”

“Well, I guess. I’m taking a year off from school anyway, and Lettie won’t start eighth grade until after the P and G shoot’s finished.”

“Why?”

“Be-cause,” Rustine replied in a you-moron tone, “we each clear a thousand to fifteen hundred dollars every day we work. We make as much as our dad, and he’s an engineer.” She slipped out of the kitchen, presumably to join the other young people on the porch. That girl did have a way of making me feel aged.

I gratefully swigged the iced latte—made with fatten ing whipping cream—and brought water, seasonings, and the lemon skins to a boil so I could poach more shrimp. With a plentiful salad, the Mexican torte, and a frozen rice pilaf quickly defrosted in the microwave, we’d be okay. I needed to talk to Tom and start prepping Weezie Harrington’s party. But most of all, I knew I absolutely had to copy the Smythe cookbook file and get it back to the museum before it opened in the morning.

“Look,” I said when Julian returned to the kitchen, “I can’t think about going out to work at the cabin right now. If you want to put together a proposal for them, I’ll look at it tonight. But right this sec I really need to do an errand in town.” I took out the frozen pilaf and pointed to the salad ingredients. “Can you defrost the pilaf and make a salad for the rest of the dinner? I’ll be back in less than an hour.”

“Sure,” he said enthusiastically as Rustine glided back into the room. I snagged the file, sprinted out the front door, and waved a hasty good-bye to the occupants of our front porch, who ignored me. In a cloud of dust, I reversed the van down the driveway. I doubt they noticed.

At the Aspen Meadow Public Library, I laid out crisp dollar bills on the copier farthest from prying eyes, and flipped through the file. The Practical Cook Book, written by Elizabeth Hiller—whose stern cameo was featured opposite the tile page—had been published in Chicago in 1910. Only two or three recipes were printed on each of the small pages. Although I’d determined to work as quickly as possible, I was puzzled by a note written after the page with Winnie Smythe’s name and the date 1914. In a different hand that featured severely slanted letters and fine long curlicues was the inscription: My Dear Wife, when you make my Favorite Dessert, remember to make the Rolls the way I taught You. It was signed, Your Loving Husband.

So, Charlie Smythe gave cooking advice in addition to being a rancher and unsuccessful bank robber, eh? Busy fellow. I slapped the file sheets madly into the machine, and frowned at two pages with random rows of letters in the outside margins. Contained the recipes for German Coffee Cake and Parker House Rolls. In the margin was a row of slanted ink letters that spelled nothing: U, A, A, Z, N, B, K, R, D, L, M, I, E, W, P, Q, R, V, Z, X, T, S, A, U, H, G, F, D, E, Y, T, R, E, P, A, S, L, W, I, C, E, X. Contained two more grids, with rows of different letters in the margin next to the recipes for Bread Pudding and Steamed Apple Pudding. This was the handwriting that made this cookbook a valuable collector’s item? What were these letters? Directions on how to make the rolls the way Charlie had taught Winnie? Now that’s what I called secret recipes.

The last item in the stolen file was a copy of the letter written to Winnie from Charles when he was in Leavenworth. I’d seen the original in the shattered case at the Homestead:My Dear Wife,

You must know how very much I love you, and how I would tear out my Heart to see you again. To get to my cell, I pass a wall in which I have tried to carve your name. I remember our cabin Kitchen with its smell of Bread and Pudding, how you would use Cookery to show your love for me. I have only read one book. Sky here is seldom seen. I long for our bed, children, Family tales, rifle, horses, cabin, and beautiful land where I believed to find Riches. One day, my Love. Your Loving Husband

Hmm. More references to bread and pudding; and it was the pages with those recipes that contained the random letters. But this eighty-year-old puzzle would have to wait until I could go over it, preferably with Tom. He wouldn’t be happy about how I’d obtained a copy of the file, but he’d live.

I finished the photocopying, reassembled the original file as well as my packet of copies, and hustled out of the library. It didn’t take long to sneak back into the Homestead, replace the original file, and tear the tape off the back door so that this time, it really did self-lock. It wasn’t until I was pulling back into our driveway that I realized I’d left my stupid baking pan on the table of the museum kitchen.

Arch was standing in the driveway when I returned. He looked embarrassed and frantic, and I had the feeling he’d been lying in wait for me. He hopped out of the way so I could pull into the garage, where I hastily tucked my photocopied file under the van’s front seat. At the moment, Tom was the only person with whom I wanted to share the contents of the pilfered book.

“Hon, what’s the matter?” I demanded when I hopped out.

“Lettie and I want to have dinner at the Chinese place.”

“Tonight?”

“Please, Mom, may I borrow twenty dollars? I don’t have time for you to take me to the bank to get into my own account, and I don’t want to ask Tom because he’s suspended with no pay. Lettie and I will walk down to the Dragon’s Breath and walk back. So you don’t need to take us.” He kicked at a pebble in the driveway and sent it hurtling down into the street. “Please.”

I pulled two ten-dollar bills out of my pocket. “Forget borrowing, just take it.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Remember not to have peppers, they make you sick.”

Arch just shook his head and ran off.

In the kitchen, Tom wedged a crowbar behind a drawer to pry it loose. With a sickening shriek, the drawer and cabinet below it tore from their moorings and crashed to the floor. Ignoring the sound, Julian packed up food on our one remaining counter. Our kitchen table had been pushed against the wall. Standing beside it, Rustine watched the destructive drama with undisguised interest.

“Why are you doing this now?” I cried.

Tom, who had been peering at the rubble with a satisfied expression, appeared surprised. “I have to get rid of the old stuff today so I can go pick up your new cabinets.” He raised a bushy eyebrow. “I would have asked you about it, but nobody knew where you were.”

“Where am I supposed to work?” I wailed. “How are we supposed to eat?”

Tom and Julian exchanged a look. Women, it clearly said. Julian picked up two grocery bags loaded with foodstuffs. “Tom said to pack up the shrimp and torte for a dinner picnic. It’ll just be the four of us here. Did Arch tell you he and Lettie were going out for Chinese? And Tom has some secret picturesque spot for us, right?”

“You bet,” my husband said cheerfully. He put down his crowbar. “Let me just go get showered. Miss G., why don’t you come upstairs and talk to me?”

As I sat in the steamy bathroom listening to the shower patter, I realized this was the wrong time to bring up stolen paperwork, especially to a cop. Even if that cop was on suspension. I tried to focus instead on Tom’s patient explanation that he’d be done with the kitchen in a mere month or so.

“I need you to decide if you want a lazy Susan as the under-counter cabinet in the corner six feet to the right of the sink. And I need to know if you want a double or single sink, and if you want stainless or some color.”

“I’d love a lazy Susan cupboard, thanks. And I’d prefer a double sink, stainless, please. And don’t forget three separate sinks are required by the county for food service.”

“My dear Miss G. Trust me, okay?”

I could see his body through the steamed-up glass of the shower stall, and immediately thought of better things to do than discuss kitchen amenities. Tom turned the water off, wrapped a towel around his middle, and shot me a quizzical look. “Okay, so I can ask you questions about what you want, and you won’t be upset with me?”

I smiled. Of course, it wasn’t what I wanted that was bothering me, it was the mess, the cost, the fear that when he finished, I’d have something rich and strange, like oysters with sour cream and truffles, that made me sick to my stomach just to contemplate.

Tom paused in his toweling-off and regarded me questioningly. “Why is this red-haired young woman here, exactly? Rustine. The one who was getting it on with Gerald Eliot, right?”

I shrugged. “Right. She’s a model for the Prince and Grogan shoot. I think she thinks Julian is sexy. Of course, the only man I think is sexy is standing half-dressed in front of me, while the bed is beckoning.”

Tom chuckled. “How about when we don’t have people waiting for us to have dinner with them?” He finished drying off, pulled on the clean yellow shirt and khaki pants he’d brought into the bathroom, and gave me another quizzical expression. “This model. Did she and Julian hook up before now? Or did she just show up here?”

I remembered when I’d unexpectedly seen Rustine in her green outfit, jogging down our street just before Julian arrived. “I don’t think they hooked up before now. Why?”

“What do you know about her and her sister?”

“Well, let’s see. Because of Rustine’s relationship with Gerald Eliot, Merciful Migrations fired Gerald. Rustine and her sister Lettie go to Elk Park Prep and model, too. I think Julian ran into them in town when you sent him off to find Arch, and they all came back together. Why the big interest?”

He rubbed the towel over his hair. “Not sure. I just don’t trust her. Could you ask her some questions about the fashion photo people?”

“Like what?”

“Be the good cop, Miss G. Ask some friendly questions while we drive, see if she’s on the up-and-up. I’d like to know what the real story is.”

“Do you think she’s lying about something? And I should ask her questions when we drive where?”

“Look, Goldy.” He dropped his comb on the countertop, took my hand, and led me down the stairs. “What is it they’re always telling the yoga people? Just go with the flow.”

“Okay, but could we at least take Julian’s car? Please? It’s cleaner.” In every sense, I added silently.

“So where are we headed?” Julian asked once we were all in his Range Rover and he was driving us toward Main Street, ten minutes later.

“To the Smythe Peak Open Space area,” Tom replied. “I’ll direct you.”

A cluster of blush-rose clouds rimmed the horizon as the summertime sun slowly sank. I bit the inside of my cheek as we passed the ornately carved entry to the Dragon’s Breath Chinese restaurant. Back at home, I had left a note for Arch under the front doormat, our agreed-upon spot for messages. Gone out for a picnic dinner, just in case you get home first. Home by eight. Please stay on the porch with your friend. I doubted Lettie’s dad would approve of a fourteen-year-old boy inviting his daughter up to his bedroom to see his ham radio equipment.

Rustine, who sat next to Julian, turned around to smile at Tom and me. She was so pretty, so perfectly made up, so disarmingly clothed in what I usually considered underwear, that it was challenging to come up with casual chatter, much less a friendly interrogation.

She said matter-of-factly, “You must be freaked out about Chef André. That day you worked with him and gave me the coffee? I didn’t know he was your teacher. Julian told me. And to think he died in that same kitchen … spooky.”

I frowned. Was she offering sympathy? How was I supposed to respond to freaked out? We whizzed past the library and headed out of town. “Did you … get to know André at all during the shoot?”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “He seemed … a little weird, you know. But real lovable.”

I glanced at Julian, who was frowning at the road. Given the nature of Rustine’s alleged relationship with the late Gerald Eliot, I wondered how she defined lovable. “Oh,” I commented knowingly, “André had his ways. But when you say weird, do you mean eccentric? How was he … during the shoot?”

“Well,” she said, “like if anybody put salt on food before tasting it, he had a fit. One time Ian blasted Rufus to go get him some soy sauce from the kitchen. That didn’t go over very well with André, who yelled that Rufiis was an imbecile.” She giggled. “Rufus really isn’t very smart, but he hates it when people draw attention to it.” Her tone turned mock-serious. “And you can’t imagine how upset André got when some catsup got poured into a raspberry sauce he’d made for a cake, or some pickle ended up on his seafood stuff. Plus,” she added resignedly, “some people just have bad manners. You know, they stick their fingers instead of vegetables into bowls of dip. So Chef André would get after us in the hygiene department. Anyway, with all that butter and anger, it’s no wonder he had a heart attack.”

My heart ached. She could be right. So why was I so convinced there was something amiss about André’s sudden death? I glanced at Tom. His face was expressionless. His cop face, Arch liked to call it. “Ah, Rustine?” I asked innocently. “Have you had much experience with other caterers on modeling jobs?”

“Ha!” she chortled. “Usually it’s cold cuts and iceberg lettuce followed by brownies.” She shuddered. “André was the best we’d ever had. Ian’s always made plenty of money to spend on catering. But he hasn’t exactly been generous about spreading it around. Or in treating his helpers or the models very well.”

“That’s too bad,” I murmured sympathetically, myself a veteran of a cheapskate ex-husband. “What do you suppose changed his mind this time?”

“Oh, having André was probably Leah’s idea. She tries to smooth out old chintzy Ian’s rough spots.”

“Turn at the next right,” Tom ordered Julian as we approached the flashing yellow light by the You-Snag-Em, We-Bag-Em Trout Farm.

“So …” I didn’t want to jump right into asking about Ian and Leah; that would surely seem nosy. “Have you known Ian long?”

“Two years. Ian noticed me when he was shooting an ad at the athletic club. He recommended that I audition as a model, and mentioned a couple of agencies in Denver. I hooked up with one.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“The money is super. But the work’s hard, and it’s off-the-charts stressful.”

“Because of not being able to eat?”

Rustine turned around so abruptly I was startled. “For us, our bodies, our faces, the bookings we get, the money we make … it’s our whole lives. We get a zit, it’s a disaster. We gain a pound, we’re on the phone to Kevorkian, you know?”

“I guess I don’t,” I murmured.

“Plus the jealousy, if we don’t get chosen for a shoot?” She rolled her eyes, “Eats us alive. And then you see what’s coming: One day, it’s just over. A model goes in for a cattle call, sure of a booking with a client they’ve worked for for years. The client says, ‘We can’t use you anymore.’ Believe me, you don’t want to be around when that news breaks. I’ve seen it happen, and it’s not pretty.”

“Is that what was going on the day I was there? With Leah’s half-brother Bobby?”

“Oh,” she said with forced vagueness, “who knows? Bobby has an in because of Leah.” She made a noise to indicate her disgust. “It really stinks. You think the world’s fair, and then you see old potbellied, red-eyed Bobby get a job, and you know it isn’t.”

Tom gave me an exasperated look. Guess he didn’t approve of my interrogation methods. I went on: “Do you … have much time for … you know, hobbies, extracurricular activities, schoolwork, whatever, between shoots?”

Rustine didn’t reply. I glanced at Julian, who scowled into the rearview mirror. Guess he didn’t approve of my interrogation methods, either.

“Take the next driveway on the right,” Tom instructed.

We chugged along. Rustine’s hands tightened on the dashboard. The next driveway on the right led to the house of Mr. and Mrs. Cameron Burr.

At the end of the rutted drive, I expected to see the bright yellow police ribbons that usually marked a crime scene, but there were none. A stocky uniformed policeman sitting in front of the guest house got to his feet and lumbered to the car. Julian powered down the window.

“Schulz?” The cop’s voice was surprisingly high and querulous. His dark eyes swept the interior of the car. He lifted his chin in acknowledgment of Tom. “Yeah, you were right,” he observed laconically before walking heavily back to his perch on the deck.

“Right about what? What’s going on?” Rustine asked as her eyes followed the policeman. “I thought we were going on a picnic. Isn’t that what you said?” she demanded of Julian. Julian shrugged and glanced at Tom.

“We can still have dinner outdoors,” Tom said amicably. “You can drive over to the Open Space picnic area now, big J.”

Julian torqued the wheel. The Rover rocked down the Burrs’ driveway.

“Okay, let’s see,” said Tom when we were out on the two-lane road once again. “A week ago, about here,” he pointed out the window, “the officer we just met saw a red-haired woman scavenging along this road. It was in the late afternoon of the day after Gerald Eliot’s body was found at the house we just left. I called the cop back there to see if he’d take a look at you, see if he could identify you as the one searching through the grass.”

Rustine exhaled. Her beautiful eyes remained locked on the road.

“I can’t arrest you, Rustine.” Tom’s voice was gentle. “Can’t even take you in for questioning. But there are a couple of things that have my curiosity up. One report tells us you were going out with this fellow Eliot before someone murdered him. Then you were seen near here, right after Goldy found Eliot’s body. You were obviously looking for something. Now you’re hanging around us, with your we-just-ran-into-Julian line. You want to satisfy my curiosity?”

Chapter 16

“I don’t have to talk to you, you know,” she said defensively, still refusing to look at him.

“You’re right, you don’t. And I’m not accusing you of anything.” Tom maintained his calm, soothing tone. “I’m not allowed to do that. Nor can I keep you here against your will. I’m suspended, remember?”

She whirled in her seat and gave him an icy look. “I did not kill Gerald.”

“Good for you,” Tom countered with a smile. “We’re just wondering what’s going on, that’s all. Eliot was murdered. He was a terrible contractor and an even worse security guard. He had done work for a lot of people who didn’t like him, including unfinished work for Ian’s Images, out at the Merciful Migrations cabin. Then right after his death, my wife’s teacher died suddenly, just when he was working for Ian’s Images. Is there a connection?”

“I don’t know,” Rustine said uncertainly.

Tom went on: “But you must not have found what you were looking for when you were out here searching around. If you had, you wouldn’t be hanging around us, saying you just happened to bump into Julian.” He paused, then said, “Is it because you think André might have told us something? Something that somehow got him into trouble, too?”

She immediately muttered, “Oh, crap.”

Julian’s face in the mirror registered distaste mixed with disappointment. Some picnic.

Rustine seemed to be turning something over in her mind. After a moment, she gave me a girls-only grin. “Actually, my little sister really does think your son is cute, Goldy. And smart, too.”

“If your cute little sister breaks my son’s heart,” I retorted calmly, “I will lop off her cute little blond braid.”

Rustine wrinkled her nose and scowled at me. “Man! What is it with you?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for Rustine. After all, what had she been doing out here? Playing detective in the wake of losing a loved one? Wasn’t that precisely what I was doing?

Julian pulled up to the picnic tables at the trailhead for Smythe Peak. Tom opened the back door of the Rover and announced that we could continue talking while we ate. We set out the platter of shrimp, the torte, a basket of rolls, and two salads Julian had made. The first was comprised of avocado chunks, romaine lettuce, and sugared walnuts tossed with a champagne vinaigrette; the second was a delectable mélange of fresh grapes and pineapple chunks robed in a buttermilk dressing. I put a pitcher of iced tea next to the rolls and recalled my first day at the cabin, when Rustine had come into the kitchen seeking coffee. What had she said? You’re the caterer who figures things out

“Start with your relationship with Gerald Eliot.” Tom proceeded to pull the tail off a shrimp, dunk it in our homemade cocktail sauce, and stick it in his mouth. He chewed and winked at me, as if to say, Good food. Good interrogation. I was happy to discover that Julian’s green salad was out of this world.

Rustine ran her fingers through her luxuriant red hair and shook it over her shoulders. She waited until she had our attention, then announced, “Gerry had found something that was going to make us rich.” Julian moved his gaze to the rosy-feathered clouds fringing the mountains. Less assuredly, Rustine added, “Or so he said.”

“What was it he found? And when did he find it?” asked Tom. “Was it at the cabin or at the museum?”

“I think I should begin at the beginning,” she said, almost apologetically. “Gerry and I started going out in June. I was up there doing the shoot for Prince and Grogan’s July R.O.P.—that’s run of press—their ads for July, to be in the Post and News. Gerry was tearing out the wall in the cabin kitchen to put in windows. He never finished, of course.”

I groaned.

Rustine’s tone became defensive. “Look, I know all about Gerry taking your money/ But … he’d been fired by Ian’s Images in the middle of July. They never even paid him for his work, even though he’d given Leah his bills. Rufus said that Hanna wanted Gerry out because Gerry was involved with me. But I never believed that.”

Tom studied another plump pink shrimp. “Why did Eliot—Gerry—scam my wife and keep a crummy security job, if he’d found something to make him rich? And are you going to tell us what it was? Or do you even know?”

Rustine’s perfectly powdered brow furrowed. “I … don’t know what it was exactly … whether it was a thing, or some dirt on somebody … or what.” She faltered. I had the distinct impression that she was lying. “Gerry was in a real financial bind, though,” she went on. “His last credit card had been canceled. He’d had to put down cash for some of the windows he’d ordered for projects.” I thought of Cameron and Barbara, with their pink and blue sheets of glass winking in the sunlight, of the cabin kitchen and my own cooking space, both with glued plywood over the sink. Rustine assumed a sad tone. “Yes, Gerry took the Burrs’ money, and Goldy’s, too. But it was just to stay afloat until he could get to the next project.”

Rather than dwell on how dumb and trusting I’d been, I helped myself to more avocado salad.

“So he didn’t tell you what he’d found, or found out?” Tom pressed.

The edges of Rustine’s lipsticked mouth turned down. “He said he’d found a weapon.”

“A weapon?” I interjected. I immediately thought of the strange marks on Andre’s hands. Could they have been caused by a weapon? “What sort?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you guys might tell me. Like, that you’d come across … something?” She looked at us expectantly. “Or maybe,” she continued, “that André had told you some secret he’d found out? Say, about Charlie Smythe, who used to live in the cabin? Maybe something to do with cooking in that kitchen, that Gerry and André might both have found out,” she added desperately.

Julian cut himself some more torte. “That makes a lot of sense, Rustine. Something to do with cooking in that kitchen that would have contributed to two guys’ deaths.”

Rustine closed her eyes and shrugged. “Well, André cooked, didn’t he? And Gerry had been doing work in the cabin kitchen, too, right?”

My mind went back to The Practical Cook Book, but I said nothing.

“Here’s what we’ve got,” Tom said. “A contractor hated by his clients gets fired from a job where he’s having an affair with an employee.”

“I wasn’t an employee—” Rustine interrupted indignantly.

Tom cocked an eyebrow. “Item two.” Rustine pressed her lips together. “Eliot claimed to this Ian’s Images employee that he’d found something, or maybe found out something that he claimed would make them rich. It might be a weapon or it might be information, right?” Rustine nodded once, quickly, then licked her Ups. “At Eliot’s second job,” Tom went on, “security guard at the Homestead Museum, where he arrived the evening of Sunday, August seventeenth, he was strangled to death in what appeared to be a faked burglary attempt. Law enforcement officials believe the perp was one of Eliot’s disgruntled clients. Of whom there are at least three still living in or near Aspen Meadow.” He pointedly avoided looking at me. “The perp—and at this point we still think we’re looking at one person, one crime—stole some things from the museum. Is that what you were looking for?”

“What?” Rustine asked innocently.

“Something stolen from the museum?”

“What was that?”

Tom tried again. “C’mon, Rustine, help us out. Were you looking for something?”

Rustine replied, “What are you missing?”

The blankness of Tom’s cop face made me smile. I’d read enough about law enforcement cat-and-mouse to know that the last thing he’d identify for Rustine was what the sheriff’s department was still missing. And if Rustine knew about the fourth cookbook, then she knew a lot more about Gerald Eliot’s murder than she was letting on.

Tom cleared his throat, then said, “André Hibbard also worked at the cabin, in the kitchen, in fact, and he died under what may be questionable circumstances. And yet, the coroner is about to rule Chef André’s death accidental.”

Rustine added eagerly, “But who knows what really happened? André worked at the Homestead Museum one day of the shoot, don’t forget that. And that guy who’s under arrest for Gerald’s murder? Burr? He’s like, the president of the historical society, which has its headquarters at the Homestead. So … I figure somebody with connections to both Merciful Migrations and the Homestead must have murdered Gerald and André.”

“The Pope was in Denver last year,” Julian commented solemnly as he served himself fruit salad. “It doesn’t mean Goldy catered to the cardinals.” Rustine shot him a furious look, but Julian was right. When it came to conclusions, this girl definitely won the long jump.

“Okay, people,” Tom soothed, “I’m going to call a buddy of mine at the department and see what we can find out about Ian’s Images, Merciful Migrations, and the Homestead Museum. Financial problems, people problems. Maybe there’s a public record that would give us an insight into whatever it was Gerald Eliot stumbled on that was going to make him rich.”

“Look,” I said to Rustine, “maybe there’s more that’s gone on at that cabin than you’re aware. You’re the one who could find out if someone, say, didn’t get a modeling job. That person could have argued with Ian or Leah, and maybe André overheard the fight. Or someone might tell you that Eliot knew about some other conflict, or saw or found out something he shouldn’t have. What if Ian Hood fired Eliot because Eliot was trying to blackmail him? Then if André stumbled on the same incriminating piece of information, it might have made things dangerous for him.”

“I can’t find that stuff out.” Rustine’s whine was full of complaint. “I’m telling you, these people scare me.”

But you want us to figure it out, I thought. Have us work on it, and find out what happened to your boyfriend, and maybe in the process, find whatever it is that’s going to make you rich. The conversation ended. Julian encouraged everyone to finish up. Rustine nibbled three shrimp without sauce. She forked a pile of romaine onto her plate, sorted away the avocado, blotted off the vinaigrette with paper napkins, and downed the damp leaves. It was painful to watch.

Locusts whirred from their hidden perches in the tall grass. A breeze smelling of pine whispered down the mountains While the sun slid into the purple outline of craggy peaks. Again I found my mind wandering back to that something stolen from the museum, Winnie Smythe’s 1910 copy of The Practical Cook Book, the facsimile of which was tucked under the driver’s seat of my van.

When the Rover ground over the gravel by our curb, Julian curtly ordered Rustine to fetch her sister. Without looking at me, he announced that when he returned from dropping the two girls off, he would unpack the picnic leftovers.

A knot of sadness twisted in my chest. But I knew better than to worry about Julian’s love life. Or lack thereof.

Seated side by side on the porch swing, Arch and Lettie were speculating on the meanings of their fortune cookie prophecies. Lettie offered us her full sunlit smile. Arch narrowed his eyes at our intrusion.

“Time to groove,” Rustine informed her sister.

Lettie grabbed her backpack and asked for Arch’s e-mail address, which he wrote on the back of her fortune. On the way to the Rover, he walked slightly behind her, like an attendant to a princess. Unbidden, he climbed into the backseat beside her. I repressed a sigh.

About to step inside the car, Rustine turned. “Goldy, when will I see you again? Will you call me?”

I reflected on the mountain of work still to be done for Weezie Harrington’s party and the Hardcastle wedding reception. And yet, like Rustine but for very different reasons, I wanted to know what had really happened at the cabin.

“We’ll see,” I promised. “Hurry back!” I added belatedly, with a hopeful vagueness intended for Lettie.

“We will!” Julian assured me pointedly from behind the wheel. I don’t think he’d even looked at Rustine since her confession at the picnic table. “Unless Rustine has someone else she wants to run into!”

I checked our messages: nothing from the Merciful Migrations people about the Soiree. So maybe I still had a prayer of winning the competition from Craig Litchfield. Fat chance, the way that charming sleaze operated. … I called Marla and left a message on her machine, saying I hoped she was surviving the audit. Next I called Pru, as I’d meant to earlier, and again got her nurse. “She goes to bed around seven these days,” Wanda told me flatly. “But she seems to be doing all right.”

I assured her I would see them at the memorial service Thursday. Then I hustled out to my van and pulled out the hidden photocopy.

“I have something I want to show you,” I murmured to Tom.

Tom was proudly surveying the wreckage of the kitchen. He’d stripped the cabinets off the walls so that all that remained were the wooden studs. Looking at the way the studs marked off coal-black paper torn here and there to reveal bright pink insulation, I tried not to think of how much my kitchen now resembled an eighteenth-century prison. I sighed.

“Miss G. Here’s where your lazy Susan will go.” He motioned to the shadowy corner far to the right of the gutted sink area. “Oh, by the way, do you want a soffit above your cabinets, or do you want the cabinets to go all the way to the ceiling?”

“Tom, I don’t know.”

He whipped out his measuring tape and snapped it along the wall. “All the way up, I’d say. Have more storage space.” He frowned at the dark wall. “Do you want under-cabinet lighting? If so, we’ll need to cover it with molding. We don’t want the molding to come down so low you can’t use your food processor.”

“Agh!” I cried. “Who’s we, cop? I just need to get my workspace back!”

“Now, take it easy. I’ve set up space for you and Julian in here.” He led me out to the dining room, where he’d stacked the furniture against the wall by the hutch. In the center of the room, four sawhorses supported two four-by-eight pressboard work surfaces. Large cardboard boxes had been carefully labeled to show their contents. I read one list: Large mixer, bowls, beaters. Food processor.

“Great. Thanks.” This was not the time to squabble with Tom about my working conditions. I had to show him the cookbook facsimile and see what he thought. “Now please, may I show you something, Tom? In the living room?”

He nodded, nabbed a few of Julian’s truffles from a covered dish, and followed me to the couch. “While you were outside, I put in a call to Boyd. He’s going to get back to me tomorrow on our questions about unusual goings-on at Merciful Migrations and the Homestead. Meanwhile, I need to set up a third temporary counter for you and Julian.”

“I promise, this will just take a minute.” I handed him the thick sheaf. “It’s a photocopy of the missing cookbook,” I explained. “Check out the inscription. Also pages thirty-three and one-thirteen.”

He put the pile of paper down on the coffee table and tapped it with his forefinger. “How’d you get this?”

“The museum keeps photocopies of all the volumes they possess, Tom. I was a docent there, remember. I know how they operate.”

“And this is the museum copy?”

“Will you stop being such a fussbudget? No, of course not. I made my own copy.”

“With their permission, of course.”

“They don’t own the frigging copyright, Tom.”

“Aha!” he said triumphantly as he picked up the sheaf of papers. “So you didn’t steal it, you only borrowed it for a little bit. Who else knows the museum keeps photocopies of their volumes?”

“Well, anybody who’s worked there, I guess. Plus, André asked, remember, so he knew.”

Tom nodded thoughtfully as he went through the pile one page at a time. He took several minutes to peruse the two pages with their bewildering list of random letters. Then he shook his head. “Presumably, this is the handwriting that is supposed to make this book valuable, right? So Fuller’s guys must have already taken a look at it, and think there’s nothing to pursue.”

“And we all know how competent Fuller is,” I observed tartly.

He offered me a truffle and I took one. “So what do you think?” he said mildly.

I frowned and savored the dense, dark, velvety sphere of chocolate. But it didn’t help me come up with a theory. “I want to know why Gerald Eliot was killed. If the motive was really murder, and you wanted to make it look like robbery, why not take something really valuable from the museum? If the motive was robbery, and the object was the cookbook, the killer could have just taken the file, forget about stealing the actual volume. Forget about killing a contractor-guard.”

Tom licked chocolate from his fingertip. “Unless the robber didn’t know the photocopies existed.”

“Sheesh.”

“Tell you what: I agree with you about one thing, Miss G.—I’m convinced that Cameron Burr didn’t kill Gerald Eliot. There are just too many loose ends. Eliot was on to, or up to, something. Rustine, despite her lack of forthrightness, has convinced me of that. And whatever Eliot was up to got him killed. And got the museum messed up in the process.”

“I just keep thinking about reverse psychology,” I said. “General Farquhar used to tell me that a good burglar will always try to make it look as if he hasn’t broken in, so that it takes longer to discover the crime and longer to find him. But this burglar-killer didn’t do that.” I hesitated. “Your anonymous hiker who phoned in the tip about Gerald Eliot? Exactly when did he call?”

“Monday afternoon, the eighteenth. We left immediately for Burr’s house.”

“Okay. Say the true motive is burglary, not homicide. You want to make it look like homicide, though. You need to distract people from the real crime. So you steal stuff you don’t want and dump it in the trash of the guy you’re trying to frame. And the guy you’re trying to frame—Cameron Burr?—is someone you know hated Gerald Eliot. Now, Eliot was guarding the thing you’re stealing. The thing you’re really stealing, not the things you’re stealing as decoys.”

Tom frowned at my logic and drummed his fingers on his knees. “If you wanted the original of this cookbook, why not just steal it, and plant some other stolen stuff at the house of the person you’re trying to frame? Why kill the guard and try to frame that other person for murder? And why, when this was all over, did André, now dead, ask for a photocopy of this exact cookbook? It’s like the damn thing’s the kiss of death.”

I shook my head, baffled, as Arch and Julian came through the back door and called for us. I said, “I don’t understand it.”

With a heavy sigh, Tom got to his feet. “Beats me, too, Miss G. But in the meantime, I’ve got a counter to set up.”

Over my protests, Julian volunteered to work in the dining room to get a few things started for the Harrington party. I reminded him that he was not a servant, he was a member of our family. But he was in the mood for cooking, he insisted, and if he was a member of the family, he should do what he was in the mood for. I was too tired to argue. Instead, I put in a call to Sylvia Bevans. She answered on the third ring, sounding annoyed.

“I’m sorry, Sylvia,” I said after identifying myself. “Is it too late to be calling? I just had some historical questions about … Charlie Smythe. Would tomorrow be better? It’s very important,” I added in the same apologetic tone.

“I do not discuss historical society business at night,” she told me crisply. “However, I will call you at precisely seven o’clock tomorrow morning. Is that too early for you? I have an early meeting with our board of directors.”

I told her seven was fine, then hung up and told Julian I’d meet him in the kitchen at six A.M.

“I have something to tell you,” Arch announced in the living room, when it was just the two of us. “Lettie and I are going out.”

“You just went out. To the Chinese place.”

“Jeez, Mom.” Arch was impatient. “You don’t get it, do you?”

My son had run up the stairs before I realized he’d told me he finally had a girlfriend.

Chapter 17

I dreamt of a sinister figure spinning strands of caramelized sugar in the cabin kitchen. Then André appeared in his white apron, and the dark figure strangled him with smoking strings of sugar. I tossed uncomfortably and finally rose at dawn, when the slanted light of late summer streamed into our bedroom. Outside, all was hushed. Most songbirds had already fled Aspen Meadow for points south. Their absence and the attendant silence seemed a bitter reminder that cold, short days, blizzard-closed roads, and the increasingly uncertain future of the catering business, all lay ahead.

Work well today, I ordered myself. Concentrate on food and life, not death. I finished my yoga routine, pulled on a sweatsuit, and reflected that I certainly had plenty of prep to concentrate on. The dip; André’s coq au vin; rice pilaf; two salads. At least the cake was made.

In the dining room, Julian was already grating Cheddar for the layered Mexican dip. He’d processed a fresh bowl of guacamole and was stirring sour cream to make it ultrasmooth. He smiled a greeting, then washed his hands in the small bathroom between the dining room and the kitchen. Then he filled a container of water for the espresso machine.

“Sorry I was in such a bad mood last night,” he offered. “After what I went through with Claire …” He ran steaming water into demitasse cups to heat them, unwilling to pursue the subject of his tragically lost girlfriend from the summer before. “Anyway, I feel so dumb. I really thought that model was interested in me.”

“How do you know she wasn’t?” I eyed the dip recipe and the jewel-colored heaps of tomatoes, olives, and scallions that Julian had laid out. I pulled out a knife and cutting board.

But the phone rang before he could answer. It wasn’t seven yet; could this be Sylvia already? More importantly, where was the phone?

“I’m going to start on the coq au vin.” Julian hightafled it to the kitchen.

The phone rang again. I finally located the portable extension: Tom had placed it on the end of the sawhorse and someone had laid a towel over it. I nabbed it.

“Goldy, it’s Weezie Harrington.” Her voice came out in a rush before I could even launch into my customary greeting. “I just wanted to save you some trouble. I mean, I figured you’d be up cooking for my party, and I wanted you to stop—”

On his own portable sawhorse, Julian began beating chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap. I pressed the phone to my ear and started slicing the first ripe tomato into juicy, sweet cubes. Pre-party anxiety, I thought with a frisson of unease. Happens all the time. “We’ve already started, Weezie. Don’t worry, it’s going to be a great dinner. By the way, happy birthday.”

Tom’s Layered Mexican Dip

2 avocados, peeled and seeded

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons medium or hot picante sauce

2 tablespoons grated onion

2½ cups regular or fat-free sour cream

16 ounces fat-free spicy black bean dip

2 tomatoes, chopped (about 3 cups)

6 scallions, chopped, including tops

1½ cups sliced pitted black olives Cheddar cheese, grated

8 ounces regular or low-fat

Tortilla chips

Beat the avocados with the lemon juice, picante sauce, grated onion, and ½ cup of the sour cream until the mixture is smooth to make guacamole. Set aside.

Using 2 large platters or 2 9 × 13-inch pans, place half of the bean dip into the bottom of each pan. Carefully smooth half of the guacamole on top of each bean layer (about 1 cup on each layer). Place 1 cup of the sour cream on top of each guacamole layer.

Layer half of the tomatoes, half of the scallions, half of the olives, and half of the grated cheese into each pan.

Chill the platters and serve them with tortilla chips.

Makes 24 servings

André’s Coq au Vin

3 tablespoons butter

1 carrot, diced

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, crushed through a press

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 cup dry red wine

½ cup beef bouillon

1 tablespoon tomato paste or catsup

1 tablespoon cornstarch

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts (approximately 1½ pounds)

1 tablespoon flour

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon olive oil

In a large skillet, melt the butter and slowly cook the chopped carrot, onion, garlic, and parsley until the onion is soft and translucent, approximately 10 to 20 minutes. Add the wine, bouillon, and tomato paste or catsup. Simmer, covered, over low heat for 20 minutes. Stir 2 tablespoons water into the cornstarch until smooth. Mix into the wine mixture and stir until the sauce is thick and clear. Set aside, covered, over very low heat, while you prepare the chicken.

Pound the chicken breasts between sheets of plastic wrap until they are approximately ½ inch thick. Mix together the flour, salt, and pepper, and dredge the chicken breasts in this mixture.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy skillet. Over medium-high heat, sauté the chicken breasts for 2 minutes per side, or until almost cooked through. Place the chicken breasts in the wine mixture, cover, and cook over medium-low heat another 6 to 10 minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through. Serve immediately.

Makes 4 servings

“I told you, stop” she rasped. “Goldy, I’ve hired another caterer.”

My knife clattered to the cutting board. Be calm. She’s a client. The client is always right.

“Weezie,” I said, attempting to assume a voice of reason and patience, “you can’t hire another caterer. You’ve already paid in full. I … I’ve got all the food here.” The client, I thought, is always—

“I know I have to pay for the food. But, well …” She cleared her throat, as if she were reading from a prepared text and had lost her place. Behind me, Julian thumped relentlessly on the chicken. “I want a refund on the labor and gratuity cost. I have the contract in front of me.” Her voice was turning shrill. “Two hundred for the labor and ninety for the gratuity. Please send it today. If I don’t receive the refund in four working days, I’ll have to contact my lawyer.” She hung up.

I gently put down the phone. Is your lawyer your fiancé, honey-bunch? Julian had piled up the flattened chicken pieces and was grating black pepper onto a plate loaded with flour. He saw my face and froze. “What?”

“Weezie Harrington’s party is canceled.” I stared in dismay at the tomatoes. “Or rather, we’re canceled. The party’s still on.”

“What? Why?”

“She didn’t say why,” I murmured. I thought of Arch’s tuition that was still unpaid, of Tom’s paychecks that were not forthcoming.

“Sit down, Goldy, for crying out loud. You look like you’re going to keel over.”

I stared around the makeshift workspace. Our dining chairs were stacked, weblike, against the far wall. Sawdust lay in heaps on the floor. Tentacles of wiring stuck out from walls with half their plaster missing. Bent nails littered the corners like so many dead bugs. The phone rang again.

“I’ll get it.” Julian dived for the portable. “Golddocks’ Catering. You’re calling this early, you’d better have a great booking for us.” He paused. “Oh. No, Goldy can’t come to the phone at the moment. This is her assistant.”

“Julian, stop!” I cried. “I’m waiting for a call from Sylvia Bevans! Please, it’s important!”

He covered the phone with one hand. “It’s not Sylvia. Just drink your coffee and let me handle this, okay?”

I reached for my espresso, which was now lukewarm. Too bad it wasn’t Marla calling. I absolutely hated the IRS consuming her every minute. If hot gossip was burning through town on Weezie Harrington’s motives for canceling us, Marla would be the first to hear. “J can help you,” Julian insisted. As the person on the other end spoke, Julian struggled to keep his face composed. “Why?” he asked belligerently. “Oh, yeah, who?” After a moment, he said, “We’ll just have to see about that.” and banged the phone down.

I finished the espresso. “Weezie again? What did she want, for me to drive over with her check? If she doesn’t get her two hundred and ninety dollars back in the next hour, Andy Fuller will prosecute me and demand it in equal installments of brownies? Or better yet—”

But the pain in Julian’s dark eyes brought me up short. Whatever he had just learned from this caller, it was more serious than Weezie’s treachery. “That was Edna Hardcastle,” he said. “She’s canceling us for the wedding reception Saturday. She’s hiring another caterer. And get this, she wants a refund on her labor and service charge.”

I pictured the bags of wedding reception hors d’oeuvre crowding our freezer. I thought of the checks from Edna and Weezie that had formed the solitary cushion in our checking account. Sometimes people hit you to be cruel. Other times, they just act viciously behind your back. “Did she tell you why she’s canceling? Or who her new caterer is?”

“Craig Litchfield. His prices are much lower, she said.”

Tom, freshly showered and dressed, came into the room. “Give me an apron and a knife. I want to help. Plus, I figure something must be going on, the phone’s ringing so early. Is everything all right?”

I told him what had happened. He was perplexed. “They both fired you?”

“Not only did they both fire me—they both want refunds. Two hundred labor for Weezie, plus ninety in service charge. Five hundred labor for Edna, plus two hundred ten for gratuity, since it’s figured on the total cost of food and labor.” I glanced at Julian, who was slapping the flattened chicken in the flour, then setting the pieces aside, as if nothing had happened.

“So you get to keep the food? What have you got here,”—Tom stared at my printout—“appetizers, chicken, rice, sugar-snap-pea-and-strawberry salad, greens and vinaigrette, cake that you’ve already made. What are you going to do with the food you have? I’m available to eat it.”

But I had already reached for the phone book. It was just before seven o’clock. I looked up Merciful Migrations, punched in the buttons, got a recorded menu that gave me options and another number. I took a deep breath and called that number. A groggy Leah Smythe answered.

“Hello? This is Merciful Migrations. We can’t help if you’re trying to get rid of elk on your property.”

Now there was a greeting. “It’s Goldy Schulz, the caterer.” Leah groaned, and I took a deep breath. Was I ready to step into Andre’s job? Probably not. But I was going to give it a go, anyway. For André and for myself. “Listen, Leah, I have a lot of wonderfull food here, and I was wondering if you were still looking for meals for the shoot.”

“Goldy,” interjected Tom. “Forget it.”

I ignored him. On the other end of the receiver, masculine-sounding mumbling stopped Leah from responding immediately. She covered the mouthpiece, then came back. “This is just like the other guy,” she said drowsily. “He’d do free catering for me if I’d vote for him for the Soirée. I told him I didn’t have a say in it. The votes belong to Marla, Weezie, and Edna. I don’t have a vote, Goldy.”

My skin went cold. “I would never try to bribe you, Leah. Nothing I do is free, but my services are reasonably priced. You need a caterer and I’m already familiar with the site and setup. The food will be ready when you need it. How many more days of shooting do you have?”

“It’s Wednesday,” she said with a yawn. “Two, if nothing goes wrong. Today and tomorrow. Stretch into Friday if there’s a screwup.” She sighed, as if what she really wanted was to go back to sleep. “All right, you can have the booking. But you’ll need to abide by André’s original contract.”

“I may not be able to provide the exact food he was offering to you. Only the price.”

She yawned again. “Just a minute.” More muffled conversation. “If you can be there by ten to do a breakfast-type coffee break and then lunch for fifteen people, that would be great.”

“No problem.”

“I’ll call Rufiis and have him open the gate for you. What time should he be there?”

“Eight-thirty. And, is that Ian Hood with you there, by any chance? I’d like to talk to him later today about the voting for the Soiree.”

Leah covered the phone, then returned to say Ian could chat with me after the lingerie shots today. Super, I thought, hanging up. If they wanted a coffee break during the lingerie shoot, I had just the recipe for the occasion.

“We’re on,” I informed Julian and Tom. “Coffee break and lunch. There’s fresh fruit in the walk-in we can slice. We’ll pick up yogurt on the way, and I’ll make cakes on the griddle when we get there. In Scotland they call a griddle a ‘girdle,’ but it’s really just pancakes. Girdle cakes for a lingerie shoot. Pretty cute, eh?”

“I don’t like this,” Tom commented as he pulled out strawberries to slice. “I don’t want the two of you going up to that cabin unaccompanied.”

The phone rang again and we all looked at it.

“It might be Sylvia,” I said. The way this morning was going, she would be calling to say Litchfield had won the tasting.

“I’ll let you know if it is,” Tom offered as he hugged the strawberry bowl to his chest and snagged the phone from the sawhorse. After a moment of silence, he put down the bowl and pulled out his ubiquitous spiral notebook.

“Go ahead,” he ordered. He wrote furiously. “Thanks. You free today?” A pause. “Think you could go out to Gerald Eliot’s former workplace? A cabin in Blue Spruce. Goldy’s catering up there and it’d make me feel better if you’d stay with her.” I shook my head furiously; Julian groaned. Tom raised an eyebrow at me and grinned. “Sure. Come by our place about seven forty-five. Oh, wait. Could you pick up a couple of gallons of fat-free vanilla yogurt on the way?”

“I’m going to the cabin, too,” Arch announced from the doorway. “Lettie might be there. I want to talk to her about my radio equipment.”

“You are not going,” I said firmly. Why was everyone in this house up before seven on a summer morning? How were Julian and I going to get the prep done with all these interruptions? “They’re doing a lingerie shoot today, and Lettie’s too young to wear lingerie. And if she isn’t and she is in the shoot, it would not be appropriate for you to be there.”

“Call her up and invite her over for lunch,” Tom interjected wisely, while Arch was still trying to puzzle out what I’d just said. “I’ll be working on the kitchen. You can have sandwiches on the deck. Eleven-thirty.”

“I sent her an e-mail about my ham radio equipment, and she can’t wait to see it,” Arch said earnestly. “Get this—her dad taught her how to put an antibugging device on her phone.”

“Wow,” the three of us said simultaneously. Arch vanished up the stairs to shower and agonize over his clothing for the day.

Thick, sweet slices of strawberry fell before Tom’s expert knife. “That was Boyd,” he announced. “He told me I passed the lie detector test.” When we exclaimed our congratulations he held up the knife to stop us. “That only means I wasn’t consciously compromising an investigation. But I did get the background we were looking for.” He deftly cored the pineapple. “First off, Boyd interviewed that cabdriver you talked to, Goldy. The one who drove André out to the cabin Monday morning. Nothing unusual about the chef, just a lot of grousing about how he was serving more gourmet dishes for skinny people who wouldn’t understand or appreciate his food. No complaining of tightness in the chest, pain down his arm, anything.”

I could just imagine it. “Did he talk about the food being done for that day? Or why he was coming early?”

“Yup.” Tom frowned, gripped the juicy pineapple, and began carving the sides. “According to the cabbie, André insisted the food was already done. But the chef had some ‘other work’ to do that meant he needed to get to the cabin early. He just didn’t say what kind of work. As to Merciful Migrations and the historical society? The society’s in pretty good shape. They’ve got a few big donors who keep ’em going. Ian Hood’s group is another story, though. He supports most of their work with the fashion photography, but he’s been losing bookings because he’s so hard to get along with, and so many photography studios are opening in Phoenix. Leah Smythe? She’s land-rich only. Plus she works for the studio and for the charity for very little remuneration. Donations and the money from the Soirée make up the rest of the budget. According to Boyd, if Ian stopped supporting the organization, the elk would be on their own.”

“Hmm.” Would it be so bad if the elk were left to fight developers on their own? Probably, my inner voice replied.

“I asked Boyd to find out just how land-rich Leah was. He said he’d have to check—”

The phone rang again. “Fourth time’s the charm,” I announced, and politely gave my greeting into the receiver.

“This is Sylvia Bevans, returning your call.”

“Oh, thank you,” I gushed. Should I get her opinion on Craig Litchfield’s mode of stealing clients? No: what I really needed to know had to do with a murder, not any kind of theft. “Listen, Sylvia, I called for some historical background, if you don’t mind. I’m doing catering out at the Merciful Migrations cabin today. I’ve become so fascinated with Charlie Smythe,” I raved as Tom rolled his eyes, “I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about him. Do you have time for that?”

“Well. I suppose. Of course, I’m always glad when Aspen Meadow people want to know their roots. It certainly is more important than adding extra lanes to the highway, which seems to be the main area of interest anymore. What do you want to know about Charlie?”

“Everything,” I said as I hit buttons on my espresso machine to fuel myself with more caffeine.

“I presume you know that Charlie Smythe was the grandfather to Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington, yes?” When I mm-hmmed, she went on: “Char-lie Smythe settled at the cabin after the War Between the States, which is what he called it, as a member of the losing side. Like a lot of restless army men, Charlie came west, but only after he’d scammed ten thousand dollars off his aunt in Kentucky. Ten thousand was big money in 1865, my dear.”

Julian was peeling kiwi. Tom dumped the sun-yellow pineapple chunks into the big blue bowl we were using. He picked up a cantaloupe and began slicing off the ribbed skin. I reached for the bananas. “He stole ten thousand from his aunt? The creep.”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say, and the story is that the poor woman died of grief. And Charlie was no one-time scam artist. He became addicted to thievery. It kept life interesting, I suppose.” She sighed deeply, as if she were discussing a piece of lovely china that had been carelessly broken.

“Back up, Sylvia, okay?” I sipped the foam from the espresso. “What about this aunt? She had ten thousand dollars in cash?”

“Oh, no,” Sylvia said sternly, as if I’d flunked a history class. “She’d buried a strongbox of gold coins before the war, but after Appomattox she was afraid the victorious Yankees would find them. Charlie promised to deposit the coins in a bank, and that was the last anyone in Kentucky saw of him! Next thing you know, it’s 1866 and Charlie and his wife, Winnie—grandmother to the two Smythe girls—are buying land in Colorado with a whole lot of gold coins. They purchased a thousand acres in Aspen Meadow and twenty-seven hundred in Blue Spruce. Wait a moment while I pour myself some tea, would you?”

“Sure.” I was the last one to deny folks caffeine.

“Where was I?” she asked a moment later. “Oh, yes, Charlie’s land. The Aspen Meadow acreage was to be an investment. The Blue Spruce land was where Charlie was going to have his ranch and his timber business, according to his boasts. He cut down trees, built the cabin, and got bored. So he abandoned Winnie and their small son Vic, the story goes. Charlie turned to crime, alas. He stole horses in the early years, then robbed stagecoaches in the later ones. He ended up trying to rob a bank. That’s how he was caught, in the end. He was in his sixties, if you can imagine. And then he died,” she concluded sadly, “at the age of seventy, in Leavenworth, during the flu epidemic of 1918.”

Puzzled, I stopped slicing. Something wasn’t right. “In the letter to his wife, he waxes euphoric about the rural life they shared.”

“You don’t need to tell me the contents of that letter, Goldy. Perhaps he honestly repented, and missed his family. Prison does that sometimes. Now I must go.”

Prison brings repentance? I wondered as I replaced the receiver. I thought of The Jerk, and shook my head.

“So what’s the deal?” Julian asked impatiently, eyeing the clock. We had a little over an hour before we needed to be at the cabin. As I was giving the two of them a summary of what Sylvia had just told me, the doorbell rang.

It was Sergeant Boyd, a half hour early, no less.

“Escort service,” he said cheerily when I opened the door. His black crew cut stood up in short, clean spikes. He was wearing a white shirt and dark pants. A white apron hugged his huge belly.

“Nice getup, Sergeant.”

“We aim to please, ma’am.”

With assurances from Tom that he would put in the first batch of kitchen windows in our absence, we packed up the foodstuffs for coffee break and lunch—formerly Weezie’s birthday dinner—and took off. I had written refund checks for Weezie and Edna; when I dropped them into a mailbox on Main Street, I murmured a prayer for that elusive psychological phenomenon, perspective.

A breeze stirred the trees as Boyd, Julian, and I headed out to Blue Spruce in my van. The air was balmy, the sky porcelain blue. On the far mountains, a breath of early autumn gold stained the swaths of aspen trees. Time to start over, I told myself.

I asked Boyd if he could tell me anything else about the department’s interview with the cabdriver who’d brought André to the shoot Monday morning. Boyd replied that he’d told Tom all there was to tell. He himself had never officially been on this case. If he had, he wouldn’t be able to come out to help today. Undercover, more or less, he concluded solemnly, so that no one recognized him. Well, great, I thought as I frowned and tried to process what Sylvia had told me.

Charlie Smythe built the cabin and got bored … became a thief, died in Leavenworth…. But what could any of this have to do with Gerald Eliot, really? How could it affect what Rustine had told us, that weapon, that unknown something Gerald had found that was going to make him rich? What had happened to the land and the cabin after Charlie Smythe died, before Leah and Weezie inherited it? And what did any of this have to do with André burning himself, overdosing on his medication, and dying of hypotension? As we pulled up to the dirt road to the cabin, I realized I had no more clue to what was going on than I’d had when I’d broken into the Homestead yesterday. So much for amateur sleuths. But I was not going to give up. I was going to be in the cabin where André died, and I was going to poke around and ask some questions. Even if I had to be obnoxious or bribe people with cake. Preferably the latter.

At the gate, Rufiis Driggle greeted us with a wave. He was wearing worn cowboy boots, torn jeans, and a mis-buttoned red-checkered shirt. A jaunty scarlet bandanna was tied around his neck. It didn’t match his scruffy red beard. He peered into the van.

“I see you have a new helper.”

“Boyd the Baker,” the fat sergeant replied matter-of-factly. Julian suppressed laughter. “At your service.”

“Rufus?” I asked sweetly when he’d closed the gate and squeezed into the van, “when we finish up the coffee fee break, could we chat for a few minutes? I’m looking for people to taste some poppy seed cake I made for another assignment.”

His cheeks flooded with color. “Uh, sure. I love poppy seed cake.”

We parked in the lot, lifted the first of our boxes, and headed past the elephant-shaped boulder, across the rushing creek, and up the stone steps to the cabin. As he heaved up one of the boxes, Rufus informed us that only two models would be working that day. Neither had arrived yet. The independent contractors—a stylist and hair and makeup people—were already in place. This was good news. If we were lucky, Rufus went on, the day’s shoot should end soon after lunch. I smiled, thanked him, and told him not to forget about being a taste-tester.

While Boyd and Julian unloaded supplies, I made a large pot of coffee, set out sugar and cream, and eyed the uneven, dusty wooden floor. This, presumably, was where André had clutched his failing heart one last time, and fallen. There was no blood or other sign of what had happened. I opened all the old wooden drawers and cabinets: they scraped, stuck, and yielded nothing more than rusted spatulas, broken knives, mismatched measuring cups, and a few dented pans. Next I eyed the stove: it ran off a propane tank, as was common in the mountains. The burners all faithfully produced circles of knobby blue flames. What had burned André? I didn’t have a clue. Finally, I examined the sink and the wall above it. I ran my fingers over the rough edges of glue and plywood, Gerald Eliot’s legacy of yet another unfinished job. Something looked different about the plywood from the time we’d catered here before….

The sudden commanding voice of Hanna Klapper made me jump. “Looking for something?”

I turned. Carrying a black briefcase, Hanna was a vision in black: T-shirt, jeans, bandanna, and black tooled cowboy boots. The Pony Express meets Polo, at a funeral parlor. Only Hanna wasn’t in mourning; she was being chic. With her free hand, she hitched precision-cut dark hair behind one ear. I said, “No, just looking at the mess. Gerald Eliot worked for me, too.”

“Well, then. You must be very familiar with his inability to get a job done!” Her voice was as severely clipped as her hair. I sighed: No matter what Hanna said to me, even when she was trying to be jovial, I felt an edge of criticism. It wasn’t my fault I’d hired Gerald, was it? Hanna went on: “I need to talk to you about the schedule for the day.”

“Sure. How about some coffee? I brought you a cup and saucer.” Hanna accepted a china cup of coffee—with a matching saucer I had brought specially for her, since I remembered from my docent days that she would decline any hot drink brought to her in a mug—and ladled in sugar, then poured in cream. “Hanna? Before we get into the schedule, there’s something I just have to ask you, I mean if you don’t mind. It’s sort of in the social life department.”

Her facial expression became coy. “Well, Goldy, what kind of problem are you having? I am probably not the one who can help.”

“Well, really, it’s about Gerald Eliot,” I said hastily, as I got out the buttermilk and flour mixtures for the girdle cakes. “Did Leah really fire him for having an affair with one of the models? You see, my assistant, Julian Teller, is interested in one of the young women, and I didn’t want Julian to get into trouble …” I let my voice trail off

Hanna sighed. “Yes, that is why he was fired. He was a lustful, secretive man. Of course, he did not confide in me.” She put down her coffee and swung her briefcase up to the counter. I was surprised to see strong, rippling muscles in her arms, quite a different appearance from her modest blouse-of-a-pioneer-woman look during her time at the Homestead. “I tried to be his friend, which is what I told the police. But I think I made him nervous. You know, there are some people you can joke with, some you cannot.”

“Ah,” I said, trying to imagine anyone who could joke with Hanna. “How far did he get before he was fired? And what was he doing with this wall, anyway?” I pointed to the plywood.

She motioned to her cup, which meant I was supposed to pour more coffee into it, which I did. She sipped some of her drink, then clinked the cup down in the saucer. “Just outside where that window was situated, there used to be a small stand of pine trees that obscured the view of the mountains. In the late seventies, the pine beetles destroyed them. So Leah had the trees taken out. Then Bobby Whitaker had the bright idea to put in large windows here, so a person in the kitchen could see the mountains. Leah hired Gerald to tear out the wall and put in windows. But he was fired once he’d torn down the wall.”

I fingered the edges of the wood, where dried glue protruded roughly from the edge next to the old plastered wall. “Why was the old wall plastered instead of being made of logs?”

She sighed impatiently. “Don’t you remember the exhibit we had on log cabins at the museum?” I shook my head. She said, “It’s all that butter clogging up your mind, Goldy!” I smiled brightly as she continued: “These old cabins are just made of trees, laid on their sides, stacked, and plastered. Inside the cabin, for some living areas such as the kitchen, the early builders would cover the logs with homemade two-by-fours. Then they put up diagonal lath strips, and covered the strips with three coats of plaster. Eliot pulled it all out. He made a terrible mess.” She touched her temple as if the thought of Gerald Eliot had brought on a sudden headache.

“A terrible mess,” I repeated, staring at the plywood. Finally I saw what I seemed not to have noticed the week before. Or had something changed since then? Along the corner nearest the stove, the wood was compressed and broken, as if Gerald had glued the plywood over the opening, then decided to pry it open to do something else. Near the corner, he’d hammered in a finishing nail.

“What happened here?” I asked. “It’s like he glued the plywood in place, then decided to move it.”

Hanna peered at the place I was indicating. “I don’t know what stage of construction Gerald was in when he was fired,” she said, “and I told the police that.” She waved her cup dismissively. “Gerald became secretive after he found what Leah’s grandfather hid in the wall.”