Prime Cut

“What?”

“Oh, yes,” said Hanna calmly. “One day I was out here with Ian and Leah, planning this shoot. Gerald found the gun that Charlie Smythe had hidden in the wall before he put up the lath strips and coated them with plaster.”

“Gerald pulled out a hidden gun?” I asked, nonplussed.

Hanna’s fingers waggled at the wall. “In there. Can you imagine? How was he going to get a weapon out quickly, if he actually needed it to protect his family?”

Something flickered in Hanna’s dark eyes. “It took Gerald a week of destruction just to find that antique rifle. Although I was impressed, of course, that that old criminal Charlie Smythe had taken such care to wrap his rifle so well in oilcloth. It was ready to go out and shoot somebody with! I mean, if that’s what you wanted to do.”

Chapter 18

“Did you all tell the police Gerald found a rifle?” I asked breathlessly.

“Of course we did.” She tilted her head. “Leah has it hung out in the living room. Haven’t you seen it? Of course, 7 wanted it for the museum. You must try to talk her into donating it, Goldy. No one will ever see it, way out here in Blue Spruce.”

The Winchester. Yes, of course I had noticed the rifle on the wall.

Hanna narrowed her eyes. “Leah kept asking, Why would an outlaw hide his rifle in a wall?”

But of course I did know. Or I thought I did. Tom had concealed his extra Colt .45 and his own Winchester ‘94 behind a false wall he’d built in our garage. Then, if someone broke in, his valuable firearms wouldn’t be stolen. Or be in the hands of someone who could use them for crime. But it didn’t take a week to get to those weapons; Tom’s rifle could be accessed by removing a rectangle of drywall in mere minutes.

To Hanna I said, “That was it? The rifle was the only thing Eliot found in the wall?”

“I think so.” She shrugged, a tiny gesture of impatience that I interpreted as we need to get on with our business. “Now, we need to talk about the schedule for the shoot,” she reminded me. When I nodded, she pushed her cup and saucer away, pulled out a black loose-leaf notebook from the dark briefcase, and hooked black half-glasses over her nose. This woman’s fashion palette was so limited, she might as well have worked for a mortician.

The somber notebook held about twenty plastic-encased pages. Hanna flipped through the sheets, each of which contained a photocopied sketch of that page’s layout in this publication, the first of three Christmas catalogs that P & G would be mailing to its customers. Hand-drawn outlines of bed and table linens, jewelry, shoes, belts, and handbags, splashed across the accessories section. Ian had finished up the still-life shots the first week, before André came on board, Hanna told me. The proofs for these pictures were paper-clipped onto the sketches.

Then came the fashion sketches, with printed notes about what shot should fill each section. Santa in chair with boy in reindeer pajamas. Yellow bikini & blue maillot for cruise section. Snugged within each plastic envelope were three or four flash-lit Polaroid shots of the items to be modeled. Suspended from coat hangers, the cruise outfits, nightwear, chinos, sweaters, blouses, coats, and dresses looked painfully unglamorous. Hanna flipped through to show three pages of women’s clothes, two of men’s. Each page represented a day of shooting. There were only two pages left. Barring any more equipment failures, the P & G Christmas shoot should finally finish by the next day, Thursday, or, worst-case scenario, Friday. André had been making between six and eight hundred dollars a day, depending on how many people showed up for each meal. I closed my eyes. I would have preferred that André be alive, of course. But I’d known him long and well enough to be sure he would have been glad that I was the one taking over his booking. I also knew he would have rejoiced that this new income would be enough for me to recoup the money lost to the Harrington and Hardcastle refunds.

To my surprise, I’d recognized the outfits from the two pages with Santa and the children. Even I had to admit these pedestrian outfits had looked pretty good when worn by adorable kids. Especially when those kids were being visited by Santa himself! The trick, of course, lay in seeing that the clothes were still the same bland outfits. Most folks, of course, were fooled. And that was why models were paid so much. It was also, I reflected sadly, why bad caterers—who only care about presentation and not the quality or taste of their food—were able to stay in business. If I ever resorted to that kind of cheating, I hoped to be stripped of my spoons.

Hanna pointed to the lingerie page. She explained that a black push-up bra with matching panties, a white lace bra and half-slip, and a pastel green granny-style nightgown were to be the outfits of the day. Zowie! I was so glad I hadn’t brought Arch. I told Hanna we were going to offer girdle cakes at the coffee break.

“That’s pancakes to you and me,” I translated.

“Fine, then. But at least now you are aware there will only be today and tomorrow or Friday for catering. Depending on how things go. So, that’s it. I’ll take more coffee, if you don’t mind.”

I poured her a refill and commented, “You seem to manage the uncertainty of when you’ll be shooting pretty well.”

Her eyes glimmered with seriousness. Her thin lips set in a slight scowl. “I need to work. So I have learned to deal with people’s idiosyncrasies. Or at least, I make a very good show of working around people’s weaknesses,” she said proudly.

Oh, right, I thought, remembering her caustic words to Bobby Whitaker during the cattle call. I said, “Do you miss working with the folks at the museum?”

“No, actually.” Without warning her voice turned bitter. “I am sorry for all the years I gave to the Homestead, with no thanks from the historical society, and certainly no monetary appreciation. I know you’re, keenly aware of how divorce can leave you financially stranded, Goldy. I certainly did not expect my husband to leave, forcing me to live from paycheck to paycheck in my midfifties. I did not expect to have to buy a used station wagon from a person selling it by the side of the road. I did not expect to be Living in a tiny apartment at the Swiss Inn, that my parents used to own! And of course, I did not expect to pay a lawyer more for an hour of his time than I spend on a month’s groceries.” She gave me a mirthless, knowing smile. “And I guess in my heart, I hoped the historical society would give me a little monetary gift when I left. Of all people, I am aware of the funds they can spare. But the society did not see fit to do so.”

“It’s tough,” I murmured sympathetically. When you suffer through a postdivorce reduction in circumstances, it’s a miracle if your attitude doesn’t turn to vinegar.

“I was lucky to find this job,” Hanna went on, her voice defiant. Her tone was threaded with the old authority.

The implied message was: And I’ll be damned if anyone’s going to take this job away from me.

“Hanna, I am happy for you.” Impulsively, I hugged her, but when she remained as stiff as a board, I realized an embrace was a bad idea. I stepped back. “Did you enjoy working with André? He helped me become a caterer back when I, too, was lucky to find a job. Did you like him?”

She twisted her mouth to one side as if trying to decide how to say something negative. “Oh, Goldy. André was an old man with a lot of stories to tell. He told them whether people were interested or not. I would tease him because he talked too much. When he would tie up one of the photo people with his chatter, then you had two people who were not working.” She picked up her briefcase, as if I had lured her into the same idleness. “My only concern has to be that the shoot run efficiently.” She marched out of the kitchen before I could ask just which photo people André had tied up with his chatter.

As soon as she left, I asked Boyd about the rifle. He said Fuller’s people had looked at the Winchester, and found that it was clean of fingerprints and had not been fired. I told him what Rustine had said about Gerald’s claim that he’d found a weapon that would make them rich. Boyd said a gun only made you rich if you used it to rob a bank. Great.

By nine-thirty, Boyd and Julian had set out a crystal bowl mounded with homemade granola and another containing a glistening array of sliced strawberries and kiwi. Crystal pitchers contained cream and skim milk. Carafes of coffee, decaf, and hot water were poised above lit cans of Sterno. I nestled assorted juices and waters into a table-size ice bath. Julian and Boyd had scuttled back to the kitchen, claiming they needed to assemble lunch. I suppressed a chuckle. Apparently, both men were embarrassed to appear openly interested in Rustine’s lingerie shoot.

They would have been disappointed, I reflected, after I watched Rustine go through her paces. The mother of all granny gowns concealed everything. Since I’d just seen the Polaroid of the gown hanging forlornly on its coat hanger, I knew it was quite ordinary, despite Rustine’s coy looks, dipped shoulder, and hands on hips. Behind his camera, Ian prompted Rustine with That’s it, baby. Keep it coming. That’s it. Don’t lose it now. Rustine simpered and kept moving through her poses. I wondered if the lace-trimmed gown could survive the restless insomnia a worrying cop’s wife endured every night, while waiting for her husband to come home with his bulletproof vest intact.

Back in the kitchen, I put these thoughts out of my mind and returned to that old soul-restorer: working with food. I hummed as I mixed the cottage cheese, buttermilk, and egg mixture with the sifted dry ingredients to make the girdle cakes. On the griddle, they would rise, develop a crunchy exterior and featherlight interior, and bring joy to the heart, no matter what you were wearing.

“I’m not staying out there to serve,” Julian announced fiercely, his cheeks pink. “That blond girl, Yvonne, is mean as a skunk. When I asked her what she was doing today, she told me to trot on back to the kitchen and mind my own business. At least Rustine pretends to like me.”

I murmured sympathetically and skimmed oil onto my electric griddle. I was studiously avoiding conversation with Rustine. I did not want anyone at the shoot even to suspect that she wanted me to act as her informal P.I. I hustled the griddle out to the central room, set it on a table, and plugged it into one of the numerous crooked wall outlets. Yvonne sauntered across the set in black bra and panties while Ian fixed his lens and swore. I frowned and remembered Rustine’s words from the first day: The blonde’s … wearing flesh-colored falsies. Was Yvonne dishonestly stuffed now? And how far had I come from pondering questions of eschatology while catering to the Diocesan Board of Theological Examiners?

Ignoring these mental digressions, I retrieved the batter and waited for the signal from Ian and company to start heating the skillet. With any luck, the bra shoot would only take twenty minutes. But the voices on the far side of the room rose suddenly, as did the level of activity. There was general scurrying and knocking into chairs. My heart sank as I gave the batter a gentle stir and wondered if we were in for another ruined meal.

“I told you so, didn’t I?” muttered Rustine at my elbow.

I jumped and barely avoided spilling the batter. “For heaven’s sake, Rustine! You told me what?” No wonder André had a heart attack, I thought uncharitably, as I righted the bowl.

Rustine, now clad in a tightly cinched sky-blue terry-cloth robe, gestured toward the far side of the room. Yvonne, in the lacy bra and panties, sat slumped on a chair beside one of the flats that formed the artificially lit three-sided stage that had been constructed for the day’s shoot. What—mountains were too suggestive a backdrop for department store lingerie? In any event, Yvonne blended in with the flats, which were painted a very light, neutral beige. Hanna, Ian, Rufus, and Leah were huddled in a hasty conference. Behind them, the day-contractors—female stylist, younger male hairdresser, older male makeup artist—shook their heads in bemusement.

Lingerie-Shoot Gridle Cakes

1 egg

1½ cups or more buttermilk

1½ cup cottage cheese

1½ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup blueberries, plus more for serving

Butter and maple syrup for serving

Oil a large skillet or griddle (the Scots call it a “girdle,” hence the name) and preheat it over medium heat.

In a large bowl, beat the egg lightly. Stir in the buttermilk and cottage cheese.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Sift again into the egg mixture. Stir in the dry mixture very lightly, mixing only enough to combine. If the mixture is too dry, stir in a small amount of additional buttermilk. Gently stir in the blueberries.

Scoop the batter into pancakes into the hot, well-oiled pan. After the cakes have set on one side, lightly loosen them with a metal spatula to make sure they do not stick. When the edges of the cakes appear dry, flip the cakes carefully to cook until cooked through and golden brown on both sides. This can take from 2 to 5 minutes per side.

Serve immediately with butter and maple syrup or more fresh blueberries.

Makes 8 to 12 cakes

“She doesn’t have any cleavage!” Rustine whispered. “She may be blond, but it’s not enough. She can’t fill that bra.” Rustine lifted her chin and shook her red hair in triumph. Up close, I could again see that her face was flawlessly, if heavily, made up. “They’re going to have to use me. That’s great, because we need the extra money.”

“Why will you make extra?” I asked innocently.

She stared at me as if I had just offered to don the black bra and underwear myself. “Because more skin shows in a lingerie shot. They have to pay extra, and especially for yours truly, who will now be used for both shots.”

“Ah.” I cocked my head toward the set. “How close would you say we are to the coffee break?”

She frowned, then assessed the conference.

“Dammit!” Ian was yelling at Rufus. “Why can’t you check out the equipment before we start?” Ian stomped toward his tripod, then tripped. Flailing wildly, he crashed to the floor. “How many times,” he shouted angrily at Rufus, “have I told you to get rid of Eliot’s damn air compressor? Are you brain-dead? Were you deprived of oxygen at birth, Driggle? Get that damn thing out of here!”

Rufus, head bent in embarrassment, picked up the heavy compressor and struggled across the great room. He passed me without a glance, pushed the compressor against the wall outside the kitchen, then hustled back to Ian’s side to see about the problematic equipment. Ian’s cursing got more colorful. Still slumped in her chair, Yvonne was scowling at her gleaming fingertips.

Rustine continued as if nothing had happened: “The coffee break will be earlier than if they’d done the shot. They’ll break in about five minutes.” Time to cook, I thought. I turned on the skillet. “Getting me ready will take at least half an hour.” Rustine sniffed the batter, then whispered, “Have you been able to figure anything out about Gerald?”

I considered her question as I dipped a measuring cup into the bowl, then poured the contents out on the steaming griddle. The pale golden batter sputtered invitingly. This was not the time to get into a discussion of the Winchester, I decided. “Is there anything you haven’t told me?” I asked.

She blushed. “Like what? The names of other remodeling clients who were mad at Gerald?”

“Anything else. About that weapon, say.”

“Break!” called Ian. He turned to catch my eye. I grabbed my spatula and hastily loosened the undersides of the sizzling cake.

“Rustine!” cried Leah. “Dressing room!”

Rustine couldn’t conceal her grin as she scampered down the hall. Yvonne rose and stalked out behind her. As she went by, I noticed a fat roll of toilet paper tucked under the bra’s back strap. The toilet paper roll pulled the bra tight across Yvonne’s breasts, but apparently, not tightly, or alluringly, enough. The black panties, smooth as cream over her abdomen, had been pinned in a multitude of folds on her buttocks. For crying out loud! I reflected as she passed me. No wonder lingerie never fits me right!

For the next twenty minutes I was occupied flipping and serving girdle cakes, which I heaped onto the famished workers’ plates next to their bowls of granola and fruit. Yvonne and Rustine did not choose to indulge in the coffee break goodies, despite the low-fat offerings. Leah reappeared from the cabin bedroom used for hair, makeup, and dressing only long enough to snag herself a bowl of granola and duck into the second bedroom, the space devoted to storage. She re-emerged with a rack of jewelry and whisked back to Rustine. For their part, the hair and makeup fellows devoured their girdle cakes, then answered Leah’s call to tend to Rustine. I had only peeked in on the hair-and-makeup-and-dressing room once. The endless mirrored reflections of hot curlers, hair spray, honey-beige foundation, and racks of clothing had made me dizzy.

“This is really good,” commented Bobby Whitaker at my elbow. Wearing a bright yellow shirt, black pants, and black-and-gold striped tie, he looked like a handsome, if somewhat plump, bumblebee.

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Yeah, I’m always turning up! Didn’ja expect me?” he crowed.

“Oh, really? How did you happen to turn up at the Hibbard house right after André died?” I ventured calmly.

He blushed and straightened. “High Creek Realty has an agreement with the morgue. Look, I’m sorry we had that little argument after your teacher died,” he added ruefully. His curly dark hair fell forward provocatively. “I’m under a lot of pressure to get a sale, Miss Caterer Lady. One thing I need to do is check out all the dead people. I’m supposed to see if their survivors want to sell, and if the house has a designer kitchen. Sometimes my showing up doesn’t go very well.”

“Forget it.” I heaped a spill of girdle cakes on his plate. “Did you see André at all when he was here?”

He shook his head and dug into the cakes with gusto. “This is my first day out here since the cattle call. I brought some papers for Leah. But she says they’ve had some scheduling glitches, so she’s going to use me tomorrow or the next day, after all.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Congratulations. So, do you prefer modeling or real estate?”

“Oh, modeling, no question. Lotta money. But I’m getting out of it now. I’ve got some other things going on.” His eyes flickered toward Rustine, who was striding confidently toward the set. Now she wore the black bra pulled tight across ample breasts by the toilet paper roll. The black panties had been nipped and tucked into place. She stretched her neck and assumed a provocative stance between the lighted flats. As Ian cued her, she began to move, smile, cock her hip, and otherwise seduce the flashing camera. Drawn by the action, Bobby moved away.

I picked up the coffee break detritus—there wasn’t much—and hauled it out to the kitchen. Boyd relieved me of the tray of dirty dishes and filled a sink with hot, soapy water. I felt thankful for his diligence in maintaining the charade, especially when it extended to cleanup.

Julian had finished plating an extra appetizer: crostini, small rounds of toasted baguette generously smeared with goat cheese and topped with a fat, spicy walnut that would provide crunch. The three of us quickly divvied up the task of heating up the Harrington birthday dinner to serve outside. We devoted the first deck table to the plates and appetizers: the layered Mexican dip, chips, and crostini. The adjoining table squeaked under its load of coq au vin, rice, and sugar-snap-pea-and-strawberry salad. For dessert, I sliced the orange poppy seed cake while Julian and Boyd carried out the beverage bottles, silverware, and glasses.

I finished my work, hefted my tray, then stared across the rushing creek to the sandbank. I tried not to think of André directing the cabdriver to carry his boxes across the bridge for the last time. Tomorrow afternoon was the memorial service. An ache swelled in my throat and I hurried back inside with three pieces of the cake wrapped in plastic for Rufus.

He was waiting by the door to the kitchen.

“Ready for tasting?” I asked merrily.

“Am I ever. Gotta get this thing back there. Ian’s splitting a gut ’cuz he keeps tripping over this thing”—he bent over and started scooting the compressor along the hallway, grunting mightily—“and of course”—he scooted and grunted, scooted and grunted—“it’ll be my job to put a notice in the paper and sell it.”

I followed him into the empty storage room and watched as he savagely kicked the compressor toward a corner cluttered with grotesque skeletons of photographic equipment. When he turned to face me, I offered him the cake. His large, somewhat dirty hands delicately pulled apart the plastic wrap, then broke off a huge chunk, which he popped into his mouth with glee.

“Tastes pretty good to me!” he said after the third chew. “Who didn’t like it?”

I sat in an ancient rocking chair that was missing an arm. “Nobody, really. Listen, Rufus, do you know much about Leah and this cabin?”

He snorted. “Well, I should. I’ve had to listen to Leah talk about this place these last five years. Why?”

I shrugged. “Just interested, I guess. I used to work at the museum as a docent, but I really never knew much about the Smythes apart from Weezie and Leah having land.” This cabin, I thought. This cabin links the deaths of Gerald and André. “What do you know about this place?”

Rufus took another thoughtful bite of cake. “Nobody ever asks me anything. You know, I’m just the stupid equipment guy.”

“I’m asking you.”

“Well, you know Charlie Smythe died in that big flu epidemic at the end of World War One?” I nodded. “Charlie wasn’t in the war, though, he was in prison. His wife, Winnie, died in the same epidemic. As to this cabin, well, Charlie and Winnie Smythe left it to their son, name of Victor.” He took a bite of cake and looked at the ceiling. “Let’s see, now. Vic Smythe married a woman named Carrie, and she was the mother of Leah and Weezie. When Vic died of emphysema about twenty-five years ago, it turned out he’d left Weezie a parcel of land that was a thousand acres. Now it’s called Flicker Ridge. Fancy pants.”

I nodded. This I did know, but I didn’t want to interrupt Rufus. Weezie Smythe Harrington, a few years after receiving her land inheritance, had given her gently sloping acreage to her much-beloved, unfaithful, and ultimately fatally unlucky husband, real estate developer Brian Harrington. When Brian died, Weezie had inherited back what was left of Flicker Ridge and promptly donated it to the ecological group, Protect Our Mountains. Ecological concerns ran in the family, apparently, even if long-lived, happy marriages didn’t.

I asked, “What about Vic’s wife Carrie? What exactly did he leave to her and his other daughter, Leah? Do you know about them?”

Rufus stood up and wrapped the thick cord around the compressor. “Yeah, yeah. Vic Smythe left two thousand of the Blue Spruce acres to his wife, Carrie. The remaining seven hundred acres and the cabin went to Leah. After Vic died, Carrie remarried and sold her land to Furman County Open Space. That’s why they named Blue Spruce’s biggest mountain ‘Smythe Peak.’ Anyway, Carrie and her new husband, Mike Whitaker, had Bobby, Leah and Weezie’s half-brother. Helping with Merciful Migrations and taking care of Bobby are Leah’s two big concerns. She’s always worrying about him. ‘What is the matter with Bobby?’ she’s asking all the time. Weezie doesn’t care if her too-tubby-to-model, failure-as-a-Realtor half-brother Bobby lives or dies.” Rufus chuckled. “But when Leah passes to the Great Migration Area in the Sky, Bobby gets three hundred acres; Merciful Migrations gets the cabin and four hundred acres surrounding it. Only none of that inheriting of land may actually ever take place.” He finished wrapping the cord and frowned knowingly. “Leah’s negotiating to sell the whole seven hundred acres, including the cabin, to the paint pellet people. Know ’em? Guys who wear camo gear and spend the day hunting for their friends so they can shoot pellets of red paint at ’em?” “Good Lord,” I said.

“She wants to split the proceeds of the sale with Bobby. It was Bobby who thought they’d get more for the cabin if they put a row of windows in the kitchen, so’s the cabin could appear to be modern. Ian will have to move, and he’s not too happy about that. So they fight about the sale. All the time. And I get to listen.”

“Uh-huh.” I hesitated. “Did you get along with Gerald Eliot? I mean, was he nice to you even though you hadn’t worked together for five years?”

He shrugged. “He was okay. But you know I wasn’t tight with him anymore. When I got back from Phoenix, he and Leah and Ian were always yakking. I thought they were talking about the windows, except I could never find any plans, you know? I figured maybe Bobby had ’em.” He paused and stroked his uneven beard. “Y’know, I think even old Hanna got jealous or suspicious of their yakkety-yak. So she got this private sort of joke going with Gerald. I don’t think he thought it was too funny, after the first few times.”

“Joke? Hanna?” I suddenly recalled her saying that she had tried to joke with Gerald.

“Yeah, something about cooking the way they used to in the Old West, you know?” From the great room, Ian hollered for Rufus. He gave me a pained look. “I gotta go-”

“Please, wait. What about cooking in the Old. West? Please tell me, it’s really important.”

He sighed. “I don’t know how it got started. Gerald asked Hanna about her work at the museum, and if she knew how to make rolls using an old-fashioned cookbook.”

“What cookbook?” I asked breathlessly. Make the rolls the way I taught you, in Charlie Smythe’s handwriting, loomed in my mind’s eye.

“I dunno,” Rufus replied. “Hanna asked why did Gerald want to know, was he going to start doing some baking? Bring us rolls along with his glue gun in the morning? And then Gerald told her just to forget about it. But Hanna kept after him, kept saying, ‘Where’re our rolls, Gerald?’ and he’d say, ‘Just shut up, Hanna!’ until finally Ian yelled at the two of them to quit it. And then Gerald started up with Rustine, and Leah axed him.” Loud footsteps shook the walls. “Look, I really gotta go”

“If Gerald and Ian and Leah were such great friends, why would Leah fire Gerald for having an affair with one of the models?”

He opened the door. “Look, Goldy, I’m looking for another job right now. If I knew why these people around here act the way they do, I wouldn’t be fixing to leave, would I? Now, you gonna let me go, or you gonna wait till Ian comes stomping in here, having a fit?”

Confused, I hurried out after him. Tapping her foot at the kitchen door, Leah asked if lunch was ready. She resembled a hothouse poppy in her orange T-shirt, green pants, and orange-and-green sandals. Her streaked pixie looked wild and uncombed. She clutched a thick manila file from which bits of paper poked out.

“Nice outfit,” I observed.

“The Mimaya has failed again,” she announced petulantly. I decided that the Mimaya must be a camera, not a piece of lingerie. “Rufus will take it down to Denver for repair, but we’re done shooting for today. In all likelihood, there won’t be shooting tomorrow, either. So, can you serve lunch now?”

“It’s ready.” I kept my voice cheery.

“You still want to talk to Ian?”

“Sure. If that’s okay.”

“He doesn’t have much time.”

With failed equipment about to be hustled to Denver by a kind man everyone treated like a drone, and work canceled for the next day, what was pressing in on Ian’s time? I couldn’t imagine, but I smiled anyway. “This won’t take long.”

“Here are Andre’s bills and menus, since you said you needed them to plan the food.” She thrust the overstuffed file at me.

“He gave it to you like this?”

She sniffed. “I don’t remember.” She turned on her sandaled heel and departed.

I waited for everyone to go through the food line. Hanna methodically consumed a small plate of chicken and strawberry salad. Rustine, Yvonne, Rufus, Ian, Leah, the per diem contractors … Since Leah had told me fifteen people, and we’d brought enough for twenty, that should be plenty of food, right?

Wrong. At first I thought something was wrong with Rustine’s and Yvonne’s food, the two models kept going back to the platters so many times. Tried this, and didn’t like it? Tried that, and still weren’t pleased? But no: they were bingeing. After four trips to the buffet, Yvonne could have beat any bear foraging for hibernation.

I sidled over to where Ian sat alone nursing a cup of coffee and smoking a cigar, his back to the mountains. Every now and then he turned his shoulder to send a stream of smoke over the creek.

“Hi there,” I said happily, instead of asking: If you really care about the environment, what’s that thing in your mouth? “Can we talk?”

He glanced behind me to see if anyone was watching. Suddenly paranoid, I looked around myself. Leah, Rustine, Yvonne, Bobby, and the day-contractors were still on the deck, but no one appeared interested in us. Ian inhaled, bobbed his chin, and exhaled out of the side of his mouth. “Heard you need something from me.” He dabbed at his gray moustache. “Is there a problem?”

“Ah, no.” I sat down. Was Ian acting defensive, or was it my imagination? “Well, actually, yes. It’s about who’s doing the catering for the Soiree.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he snorted. “What do I look like, Court TV? You catered it last year.”

“Just give me five minutes,” I promised. “Maybe less. If you knew monkey business was going on, monkey business that might get into the paper, say, wouldn’t you want to prevent it?”

He took his cigar out of his mouth to sip his coffee. “I’ve got competitors in Phoenix and Miami and New York who are breathing down my neck. I’ve got real estate development all through the mountain area threatening wildlife migration that I’ve tried to protect for over a decade.” He squinted at me. “And you’re dangling bad press in front of me? Am I going to be sorry I let you come here today? Your food isn’t that good, if you want to know the truth. The chicken has too much red pepper and the rice tastes like dirt.”

I stared at his barely touched plate. “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the meal,” I said softly, while thinking, If you’d lay off the stinky cigars, your taste buds would work. “I’m not going to the newspaper. But catering is my livelihood, even if today’s meal isn’t to your liking. Listen, Craig Litchfield is doing free parties for two of the three women judging the tasting party, in exchange for their vote.”

“And you’re sure of this.”

“He offered to do a free party for Leah, until she told him she wasn’t voting.” I steeled myself. “Weezie Harrington and Edna Hardcastle both canceled me out of catering their parties after Litchfield said he could do them at no charge, I firmly believe.”

“But it’s not as if you weren’t trying to bribe them. It’s just that the damn price was different. Right?”

I took a deep breath. What did Leah see in this person? What had it been like for André to work for him? “I wasn’t—”

Ian stubbed out his cigar and again glanced along the deck. “Listen, I’d do anything to try to save the elk in this state.”

“I realize that—”

He stood up. “Don’t drag me into your stupid squabble over who caters the damn fund-raiser. The other guy won the booking. Live with it.” He grinned. “Suck it up, caterer.” And with that he strode off the deck.

Wow, was that fun, I thought sourly.

Julian and Boyd had cleared the plates and were working inside. I picked up the mostly empty platters. A mass of red pepper flakes speckling the coq au vin sauce gave me pause. A closer inspection showed the flakes were not in the sauce, but on top of the last chicken breast; they had been dumped on. For heaven’s sake, Ian had been right. The only condiments we’d placed on the tables had been salt and pepper. The strawberry-sugar-snap-pea salad appeared okay. My examination of the rice revealed more foreign flakes, this time very thin and orange and brown. Only it wasn’t dirt. My experience with Arch’s aquariums told me this was fish food. What the heck?

I didn’t have time to find out what was going on. There was a loud crash inside the cabin, accompanied by an unearthly scream of pain. I dropped the platter and ran to the window as more howling erupted. I squinted through the wavy glass. One of the flats had broken loose from its clamp. It had crashed to the floor, with Leah underneath. For one ghastly moment, I saw Leah’s blood-covered face. No, I thought, no. Please God, I prayed, no.

By the time I got inside, Boyd was commanding Julian to help him lift the heavy flat. When Boyd saw me, he shook his head.

Chapter 19

“What happened?” I demanded of Rustine, who didn’t reply.

“Help us!” Julian yelled at Rufus. Bobby Whitaker stood to one side, seemingly paralyzed. Rufus and Ian ran to the far side of the flat and lifted at Boyd’s command.

“Don’t touch anything!” Boyd commanded.

Leah’s body was inert. She was breathing, but her entire right side appeared unnaturally folded. Her arm stuck out at a cruel angle; her leg wouldn’t move. She cried and moaned. Ian knelt down beside her and began to murmur words of comfort. Boyd snapped open his mobile to call an ambulance.

I looked at the flat. Secured by an A-clamp to a pole that extended between the floor and ceiling, I couldn’t understand how it could suddenly come loose. Just at that moment? To hurt someone? It seemed very odd. Or very convenient?

Boyd ordered me to bring clean, damp cloth napkins to wipe the blood off Leah’s face. Meanwhile, he gently checked her for shock and broken bones. When the E.M.S. arrived twenty minutes later, the paramedics shooed everyone away from her, then took great care getting her on a stretcher and across the creek to their vehicle. As suddenly as the crisis had developed, it was over. I asked one paramedic how she looked, and his tight-lipped answer was something along the lines of We can’t say.

Boyd quietly told me he was going to examine the flat and the clamps to see if there was any evidence this was anything besides an accident. Rufus had already informed Boyd that flats occasionally came loose, but that this was the first time in a while one had actually fallen on somebody. Feeling disoriented, I walked back out to the deck and picked up the platter I had dropped. In the kitchen, I showed Julian the pepper-flake and fish-food additions and asked if he’d seen anything suspicious going on out at the tables.

Julian’s face was dismayed. “No, nothing. Sabotage. Unbelievable.”

I told him that I had suspected the same thing had happened with André. Maybe he had caught the saboteur?

“Maybe,” Julian mused. “Or maybe it’s just somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

When Boyd came out to the kitchen, he said he could see nothing that would indicate someone had jerry-rigged the clamps or the flat. He even wondered if Leah had been trying to move it, as the flat had fallen on her front rather than her back. As usual, he said, no one had seen anything.

I sighed. Julian showed Boyd the platters of tainted food. He shook his head. “Cover them up and I’ll take them down to the department. I’ll see if the guys in the lab have any free time to analyze ‘em.”

When we left, Hanna seemed subdued and far from her usual bossy self. So much for dealing with idiosyncrasies, I reflected. She said she would see us Friday morning unless the equipment could not be fixed. Leah’s job of casting for the auditions was largely past, and she could manage all the details. Coffee break, lunch, all right? she asked. With any luck, that would be their last day. I nodded and tucked Andre’s bills and menus under my arm. Two more days to figure out what was really going on at this place.

On the drive home, Julian fell asleep. Quietly, I asked Boyd if he’d be willing to talk about the people at the cabin or its history. He nodded. Remembering the bitterness in Hanna’s tone when she’d visited me in the kitchen, I told him I was wondering about Hanna Klapper. Her parents had owned the Swiss Inn, now apartments. She was in dire financial straits because of her divorce. But what I didn’t know, I said, was if there was any history between Hanna and Gerald Eliot.

Boyd kept his eyes on the road and his voice low. “The department looked into Hanna because she knows the museum so well, and that’s where Gerald was killed. But since she’s familiar with the collection, they asked why a knowledgeable thief would take cookbooks, and leave those antique Hopi dolls—”

“Kachinas,” I supplied automatically.

“Right,” Boyd continued. “Those things are valued in the thousands. A person without a whole lot of money wouldn’t take a book worth sixty bucks, would she?”

“The missing cookbook has strange markings in it from Charlie Smythe.”

“So? She knew that place inside and out. She wouldn’t need to kill somebody to get pages that she knew could be photocopied from the museum files, right?”

“Gerald Eliot asked Hanna about Old West-style cooking. Making rolls. She even teased him about it. And Charlie Smythe had written to his wife in the stolen cookbook about making rolls.”

Boyd glanced at me. “So?” His response to everything, it seemed. “I don’t know anything about making rolls. You asked about Charlie Smythe and the Merciful Migrations cabin. I’ve heard the rumors about a Denver outfit wanting to put one of those paint-pellet courses out there. Don’t know if they’re true yet or not. And of course, everyone’s heard about old Charlie Smythe.” Boyd chuckled. “Guy’s a legend. He was the greediest old bastard in the West. You wouldn’t catch me trying to rob a bank when I was in my late sixties.”

“But he was caught,” I interjected.

Boyd tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Yeah, finally. Basic rule of law enforcement: A criminal keeps breaking the law until he’s in jail.”

“Keeps breaking the law. Do you know of any other crimes Charlie Smythe committed?”

“Nope. But that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes they won’t give you a hint as to what they’ve done until they’re behind bars. Then they’ll use their stories to keep you hopping. Sometimes.”

We passed a meadow where a small herd of grazing elk was barely distinguishable from the boulders dotting the prairie grass.

“The Swiss Inn,” I said slowly, thinking of Andre’s early history. “What do you know about its background?”

Boyd said, “That place is an ongoing problem because skinheads are always trying to meet there. B’nai B’rith called us a while back, wanted to know about the swastikas on the floor of the old section, and the rumors from the war. We’ve never come up with anything except totally unsubstantiated rumors about the Heinzes, Hanna’s parents. Financially and in every other way, Hanna is absolutely as clean as a whistle. She belongs to no organizations beyond the historical society, and has been loyal and generous to them, at least until she had to quit and get a higher-paying job. Before the Swiss Inn was turned into apartments, whenever neo-Nazis tried to meet there, Hanna would call us.” He rocked the van from the dirt road onto the highway toward Aspen Meadow.

Julian groaned as he awoke. I assured him we were almost home, although in truth, I was only paying half attention. An idea was forming in my mind. Did Charlie Smythe, a greedy con man who robbed for the fun of it, still have a tale to tell?

At home, the yawning garage door revealed that the entire interior was filled with boxes: the kitchen cabinets had arrived. Just shows how eagerly retailers will part with discontinued merchandise, I thought. Boyd greeted Tom, filled him in briefly on what had happened at the cabin, and then took off with the tainted dishes. Tom handed me a note from Arch saying he and Lettie were listening to music at Todd’s house. Not to worry, he’d scrawled: Mrs. Druckman was making them sub sandwiches for lunch. Lettie would eat a sub sandwich? I doubted that. Matter of fact, what had she had at the Chinese place? Steamed squid?

Tom, after asking us how we were, went back to sawing. His old friend Sergeant Zack Armstrong had come up for the morning to help him. Where the back wall had been, there were now three dusty windows decorated with the manufacturer’s stickers. The sudden vista on our backyard opened up by the wall of glass was disconcerting. I knew I’d get used to it, even love it, so I told myself not to make any negative comments.

Zack and Tom had moved on to nailing down the strips of oak that were to be our new floor. Unfinished and dusty, it was hard to tell how they would look. Tom had brought in one of the cherry cabinets; it lay tilted against a hole-pocked wall. Julian and I gushed over how stunning the dark, carved box was. Tom, sweaty and intent, thanked us and then asked us to let him get back to work.

Julian and I brought our crates of dirty dishes through the front door, wiped them with wet paper towels to remove dirt and food particles, and washed them in the downstairs bathtub. If only the health inspector could see us now. … I shuddered. It was nearly four o’clock by the time we finished. Julian offered to pick up Arch, take Lettie home, then get pizza and calzones for dinner. I handed him money from my wallet. It would appear that remodeling a kitchen, in addition to being expensive, was fattening.

While Tom and Zack banged and hammered on the first floor, I took a long shower, wrapped myself in a thick terry-cloth robe, and settled down in our bedroom. First I called Lutheran Hospital, where the E.M.S. said they were taking Leah. No one at the hospital could give me any information yet, unfortunately. Next, I pulled out the packet Leah had given me. The disheveled pages of Andre’s menus and bills to Ian’s Images were meticulously numbered and dated but out of order. I put them in order and opened my calendar. I needed to reconstruct what André had told me about his meal-service plans, and how those had been disrupted by Ian’s breaking the window with the temper tantrum that had also cost him a camera and a whole lot of glass.

The first day I had worked with André had been Monday, the eighteenth of August. I smoothed out the menu for that day and felt a twinge when I read Models’ Mushroom Soup and Goldy’s Vegetarian Dish—the Florentine cheesecakes. I traced the letters with my fingers, admiring André’s faithfully kept resolution to write as well as speak English. Burnt Sugar Cake. He’d given me careful instructions on not burning myself. I steered away from that particular irony While noting that beside the lunch menu for Tuesday, a different hand had written: André: Could you please serve lunch inside for the next 3 days? We’ll be working on the deck and need the space. L. Leah. That day, he had proceeded with Vichyssoise, Chilled Stuffed Artichokes, Marinated Beef Salad, Brioche, Fresh Fruit Skewers, and Grand Marnier Buttercream Cookies.

On Wednesday the twentieth, he’d done a coffee break that consisted of Scallion Frittata, Fresh-fruit Pineapple Boats, and Scones with Lemon Curd. Wednesday’s lunch had featured Cream of Corn Soup, Lump Crab Salad, Green Beans Vinaigrette, Dill Rolls, and Chocolate Cake. On Thursday he’d treated the assembly to Spiral-cut Ham, Fruit Plate, and Pecan Rolls for the coffee break, While lunch had been an offering of Western-style Barbecue Ribs, Coleslaw, Potato Salad, Corn on the Cob, and Brownies. American cooking? Incredible.

Friday we had catered together at the Homestead Museum, heard Sylvia’s sad tale of her violated museum, seen the children model. And he’d had his miniattack.

He’d died before serving the Monday coffee break. He’d written the prep plans, though: Crème Brûlée Cups for 20—start Saturday. To that he’d added Peach Compote—make Sunday. Heavy on the cholesterol and sugar, but that was the French way.

His bills had been uncomplicated: figuring ten to twenty people per day, service, tax, and gratuity included: ten dollars a pop for the coffee break, eighteen for the lunch. He’d averaged a daily gross of about seven hundred dollars. On Friday afternoon, he had written down the check number of the payment Leah had made to him for the first week’s work. I did not know whether he had ever deposited the check. I sighed and closed the notebook. Downstairs, the loud pow of Tom’s nail gun split the air.

I would be seeing Pru Hibbard the following afternoon, at the memorial service. It would not be tactful to pose any questions about Andre’s week with the fashion folks. The last thing a bereaved widow needed was to imagine there was anything unusual about her husband’s death. Which, of course, there was.

Slowly, I read back over the menus. I visualized André working on Sunday, peeling peaches for the compote he would serve on Monday morning for Ian’s Images. First, he would have placed the thickly sliced peaches in a baking dish, then reamed out a lemon for its juice, mixed the juice with some red wine, sugar, a cinnamon stick, and some cloves and a bit of salt. This he would have heated and poured over the glistening peaches before placing them in the oven. Then, for the other dish … Wait a minute.

I closed my eyes and remembered André bustling about to prepare crème brûlée. He’d insisted on teaching me his old-fashioned way, although I’d ended up developing my own method. André would stir and heat eggs with cream to a rich custard, then chill the dish overnight, which is why he would have started it on Saturday. Then on Sunday he would have covered it with a thin layer of light brown sugar, and … Hold on.

To caramelize the sugar, he did not use a hand-held propane torch, as I did. No: André used his own salamander, an old-fashioned iron tool heated over a fire and then run over the top of the crème, to make it brûlée. Like his butter-baller, his balloon whisks, and battered wooden spoons, André’s salamander came from the time before modern kitchen equipment was common. It was a curved, fancy implement that I’d seen many times in his red metal toolbox.

In my mind’s eye I saw André’s dead body, his burned hands. Crème brûlée crusted by the heat of a salamander. Strangely shaped burns carved into the skin followed by death … or something like that. In any event, because of the shape of the burns, I knew the salamander must have caused the scars. How had it happened? When could the burning have happened? Not Sunday when he’d originally made the custards, or he would have put salve on them, wouldn’t he? Or bandages? He’d told the cabdriver he’d finished making the food … but he had to be at the cabin early for prep. Why? Could there have been some reason why he’d felt he had to make more custards Monday morning? What would that reason be? Could someone have him While he was cooking, as Rustine had startled me today, so that he burned himself, had chest pains, and took an overdose of nitroglycerin? If someone had surprised him, why wouldn’t that person have called for help when André collapsed, as Boyd had called for help today?

It still didn’t make sense. But at least I knew one thing. André had been burned by his own salamander.

I checked my watch: just before five. I put in a quick call to the morgue, and was astonished to be put straight through to Sheila O’Connor.

“Sheila, it’s Goldy … look, I just didn’t know who else to call—”

“No problem.”

“Remember those marks on André’s hands?” When she mm-hmmed, I took a deep breath. “I know what caused them.” I told her about the menus, the crème brûlée, and the salamander.

“So, what are you telling me?” she asked patiently. “That he was burned he was cooking? I never thought anything else.”

What was I telling her, exactly? “Of course he was burned While he was cooking, but it just doesn’t add up. Why would he tell the cabdriver he was all done, and then proceed to make more food? If one of the photo people came to the cabin and told André extra people were showing up, and then André burned himself and collapsed, why didn’t the photo person call for help?”

Sheila took a deep breath. “Goldy, you loved your teacher. I know you did. I know you hate to think of him as old and vulnerable. But he was. Our guys found his empty bottle of nitroglycerin, by the way. His doctor says the bottle should have been full.”

“He took a whole bottle? When he was sensitive to it? Why would he do that? How much was in his system?”

“About two hundred milligrams. It’s a lethal dose. Goldy—”

“Did he have any … internal bruising that would have shown someone forcing pills down his throat?”

“You’re always telling me about Med Wives one-oh-one, Goldy. Remember? Nitroglycerin dissolves in the mouth.”

“Do you have any evidence that might indicate this wasn’t an accidental overdose? Please, Sheila, he was my teacher.”

“Have Tom call me tomorrow.” Then she clicked off.

Sometimes problems, like a well-simmered stock, must be put on the back burner. I couldn’t obsess about Andre’s death any more that day. Nor could I contemplate how long it would be until my kitchen was back in service. Nor did I even want to think about being replaced as the caterer for Weezie Harrington’s birthday party, or of my replacement, Craig Litchfield, wowing the country club divorcée set.

Instead, I forced myself to shove all that aside, and relaxed into our lovely dinner on the deck. If the pizza was a bit cool, the calzones a tad mushy, no one mentioned it. Arch raptly contemplated the sun slipping behind burnished copper clouds. The only thing he told us about his day was that he and Julian had been invited to Rustine and Lettie’s house the next afternoon for lunch. Tom, exhausted from his carpentry labors, fell asleep on a deck chair before Julian could proffer take-out tiramisù. I gently woke him and tugged him up to bed. Julian, bless his heart, offered to clean up. He said he was actually starting to like washing dishes in the tub.

The next morning, Tom was once again up early and hammering away as I pulled myself out of bed and stretched through my yoga. Julian and Arch were sleeping in. We had no catering jobs, although Julian had vowed to experiment with something to take to Rustine’s.

Maybe he didn’t dislike her quite as much as he pretended.

When I came into the kitchen, Tom appeared to be about a third of the way through nailing in the lower cabinets. Unfortunately, huge piles of boxes obscured my ability to admire all of his work.

“What do you think?” he asked happily. He wore a sweatshirt and jeans, a carpenter’s apron, and two days’ worth of beard.

I smiled. “I love it.” No matter what I thought, I had learned over the last few days to say his work was fantastic.

“You’ll have to get your coffee in town, I’m afraid,” he told me. “I had to shut off the water, just for the morning. And Marla called. She’s almost done with the IRS and wants to meet you at St. Stephen’s at three-thirty, before the service.”

Relief swept over me. My friend was finally going to be released from audit agony! “That’s super.” I located the phone and called Lutheran Hospital. Leah Smythe, I was finally told by a nurse I knew, had two broken ribs and lacerations on her face, arms, and legs. The doctor was in seeing her, but the nurse would relay the message that I’d called. And could she find out about Barbara Burr, I asked. I was put on hold, then told sadly that Barbara’s condition hadn’t changed. Next I called Pru Hibbard; the line was busy. I put nightmares of bottom-feeding Realtors out of my head, and hoped the engaged line meant other people were making sympathy calls to Andre’s widow.

Tom eyed me skeptically. “You seem awfully perky for a caterer with no kitchen, no water, and a tenuous business. You must want something wicked bad.”

“Actually, I need you to call the morgue.”

“Oh. Is that all?”

“Tom, listen. Just ask Sheila if there’s any possible evidence to show that Andre’s nitroglycerin overdose wasn’t an accident.”

Tom put down his nail gun and came over to give me a hug. “Miss G., I know you loved him. But you’re going to have to let it go.”

“If I’d been there helping him, he wouldn’t have died.”

“For crying out loud, Goldy, you know how many lives I could have saved if I just would have been someplace at the right time?”

“Please, Tom, I’ll let it go just as soon as I know how and why he died.” I reached for my van keys.

“Now where are you going?”

“Into town for coffee,” I replied innocendy.

“You’ve got that purposeful look about you that’s not just desperation for caffeine.”

Ah, how well the man knew me. “No bail was set for Cameron Burr, right? Because it’s a murder case.”

“Correct.”

“So the next event in Cameron’s life is his preliminary hearing?”

“Ye-es.”

“I need to go visit him at the jail. To talk to him about another oudaw.”

One of the marvelous additions to Aspen Meadow in the last year was one of those drive-through espresso places where you order, answer a trivia question, get a card punched, and lay out in cash the cost of an entire fast-food breakfast for a triple-shot latte. Still, a treat was a treat, I thought as I sipped the luscious, caffeine-rich drink and zoomed down to the Furman County Jail.

Visiting hours during the week were from nine to eleven in the morning and one to three in the afternoon. I arrived just after nine and still had half of my expensive coffee to savor. So I put the cup on the dash, got out pen and paper, and started to scribble the questions I needed to pose to Cameron Burr, president of the historical society, the one person in Aspen Meadow who might know enough to figure out the puzzle of Charlie Smythe. Unwritten, but first on the list, was: Would Cameron, who had not answered any of my phone calls, see me?

Hunched over my paper, my heart quickened unexpectedly when someone passed by the back of my van. I did not move, only looked up at the rearview mirror and followed the movement. The dark-haired man was smoking, walking fast. Usually visitors to the jail at this hour were attorneys. Occasionally, out-of-work family members would straggle in. The man glanced over his shoulder to determine if I was watching him. Catching my eye in the mirror, he flicked his cigarette onto the grass and sprinted to the Upscale Appetite van. A moment later, he revved his vehicle and took off in a nimbus of grit and dust.

Well, now, there was a question I wouldn’t have thought to write down.

Who at the sheriffs department—or in the jail—had just received an early-morning visit from Craig Litchfield?

Chapter 20

The desk officer, a fresh-faced fellow named Sergeant Riordan, was not someone I knew. I handed my driver’s license over the counter and announced my desire to visit Cameron Burr. Riordan nodded and cheerfully tapped an unseen keyboard.

“Do you know my husband?” I ventured. “Investigator Tom Schulz?”

“Schulz. Sure. By reputation, mostly.” Riordan handed my license back. “Why?”

“Well.” How to sound friendly instead of nosy? There wasn’t a way. “The last guy who was here? Craig Litchfield? I … we were wondering … Could you just tell me who he was visiting?”

The cheerful expression drained out of Riordan’s face. “No. No, I can’t tell you that, Mrs. Schulz.” He picked up a phone, punched buttons, and murmured. When he hung up, his warm hazel eyes had gone from friendly to flat. “You have thirty minutes with Cameron Burr, Mrs. Schulz.”

Cameron Burr’s ill-fitting orange prison suit didn’t flatter him. He looked older, thinner, and paler than he had just ten days ago at his home. He flattened his long gray hair against his scalp in a vain attempt to make it appear less mussed. The look in his bloodshot eyes was defeated, angry. With his right hand he picked up the phone.

“Cameron, I’m sorry,” I blurted out. “I had no idea—”

He rubbed his stubbly cheeks. “How’s Barbara, have you seen her?”

“I’ve called Lutheran several times. She’s still on a ventilator.” He nodded as if he knew this already. I said, “How are you?”

He sighed. “Terrible.” The bloodshot eyes turned wary. “Are you going to screw up my case by being here?”

“I hope not.” I gripped the grimy phone. Overhead, a whirring air conditioner labored unsuccessfully to keep the metallic air cool. “I’m trying to help you. You’re right, I probably shouldn’t be here, since I found Eliot’s body and I’m technically a witness. But I’m not here to talk about what I saw up at your house, which is what your attorney would prohibit us from discussing.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Please, Cameron, first … can you tell me if you were the one who just had a visit from Craig Litchfield?”

He cast a rueful glance at the painted cinderblocks lining his side of the booth. “No, he wasn’t here to visit me.”

“Do you know who he was here to visit?”

His voice turned rough. “Is that why you came up to see me, Goldy? To ask about some other caterer?”

“No, no,” I said as gently as possible. “Don’t be angry. I was just curious. Actually, I have a few history questions, and you’re the one person I think could answer them.”

“History questions?”

“Yes. About Charlie Smythe. But listen, Cameron, if you want me to leave, I will.”

His free hand splayed against the scratched glass between us. Curiosity momentarily sparked his face, followed fast by fury. “First, I have to tell you something, Goldy. That ridiculous assistant district attorney, Fuller, is a disgrace. The man should be disbarred. I didn’t kill Gerald Eliot.”

“I know.”

He hesitated. “Why do you want to know about Charlie Smythe?”

“I’m just … trying to figure out what Gerald Eliot was up to.” I took a deep breath. “Pulling out a wall in the Merciful Migrations cabin kitchen was one of Gerald Eliot’s last jobs. Have you spent much time up there?”

He shrugged, again wary. “A fair amount.”

“The Merciful Migrations people fired Eliot in July. He was killed in August, right after a number of items, including a cookbook once used in that same kitchen, were stolen from the Homestead Museum. Then last Sunday, my catering teacher, a French chef named André Hibbard, died unexpectedly after working in that same cabin kitchen.”

“I read it in the paper. You have my sympathy.”

I nodded my gratitude. Then I said, “André had asked for a photocopy of the stolen cookbook before he died.” Cameron looked confused, so I plunged on. “Hanna Klapper told me that back in July, Gerald Eliot found a rifle that had been hidden inside the kitchen cabin wall. I think the rifle belonged to Charlie Smythe.”

Cameron Burr frowned. “A rifle? Do you know it belonged to Charlie Smythe? How do you know it wasn’t hidden after he died?”

How did I know the rifle belonged to Charlie Smythe? I didn’t. I’d just assumed it, after the weapon and Charlie Smythe were put together in the same thought by Rustine. She had told Tom, Julian, and me about the weapon, then wondered if André had told you some secret he’d found out? Say, about Charlie Smythe, who used to live in the cabin? How had she happened to put the weapon and Charlie Smythe together? Good question. “Look, I don’t know when it was hidden. But Gerald Eliot told his girlfriend that he’d found, and I quote, ‘something that was going to make us rich.’”

“Like what?” Cameron’s voice was like gravel. “And why didn’t Leah Smythe notify our society that an item of historical significance had been found at her cabin?”

“Maybe she did.” I bit down on my impatience. “But … say Gerald Eliot discovered something out at the cabin—something besides the rifle—that got him killed at the museum.”

“And this is related to the missing cookbook you just mentioned? The one André wanted a copy of?” His forehead furrowed.

“I don’t know. I’m just trying to figure out how and why my teacher died, working in the same place that Eliot did. This summer, Eliot worked for the museum, for Merciful Migrations, and for you and me.”

Cameron Burr rubbed his chin. “He didn’t actually finish his work for you, though, did he?”

“Of course not. He took my money, made a mess, and disappeared. Next thing I knew, he’d been killed at the museum in the course of a fake robbery that might not have been fake. Why might it not have been a faked robbery? Because the cookbook of Winnie Smythe’s that was in the museum still hasn’t been recovered. Now two people are dead, and the only thing linking them is that they both worked at the Smythe cabin. What am I missing?”

His long, snorting laughter came across the phone like a truck braking on a curve. “You’re missing Charlie Smythe.”

I glanced at my watch. Twenty minutes left. “I know Charlie was a thief, and ended up in Leavenworth in 1916 for killing a teller While he was trying to rob a bank. He died in prison two years later. What else is there?”

“All right, Goldy. First, you should know where I heard what I’m going to tell you. Vic Smythe, Charlie’s son, was a friend of mine. Vic was an old-timer with the fire department when I was a recruit.”

“How long ago did he tell you these stories?”

“Thirty years.” He went on: “Charlie Smythe was a Confederate signalman during the Civil War. Came out here like a lot of folks after the conflict, restless, wanting a fresh start. Only difference was that he had money. Obtained fraudulently, as it turned out, but still his. He was only seventeen or eighteen, but smart as a whip, and ambitious. He bought land, got married, built that cabin, tried to start ranching and timbering the way mountain folk did. But he couldn’t settle down. He was always leaving Winnie out there in Blue Spruce to fend for herself.”

“Leaving for where?”

Cameron shrugged. “According to Vic, Charlie would go wherever there were horses, money, or anything valuable to be stolen. He’d be gone for weeks at a time in the summer, which was the only time you could dependably get around on horseback, if you were avoiding the roads. Word was he was up by Jackson Hole for a While, then down in New Mexico. He’d come back with a lot of cash that he would spend on boozing through the winter. Charlie Smythe never missed his family, according to Vic.”

Never missed his family? That sounded familiar; Sylvia and I had discussed just that fact. She thought Charlie had repented in prison, of course. “Do you understand that letter they have on display at the Homestead? The one that mentions his wife’s cookbook? In that, Smythe sounds as if he loved family life.”

“I know, I’ve seen that letter. Only one he ever wrote her that the family kept. Know what? Vic didn’t even believe his father had really written it, it was so full of malarkey. Soon as Vic was old enough, he had all of his parents’ possessions packed up and put away. Leah and Weezie, Vic’s daughters? They gave the whole lot to the Homestead Museum without even going through the boxes.”

“Could … Charlie … have hidden anything else in the wall, besides a rifle? Did Vic ever say his father boasted about something hidden? There are some strange markings in the cookbook—”

“I know, I know, I’ve seen them. Barbara tried to figure them out, too, but she didn’t have any luck.”

“So nobody ever figured out what those random rows of letters mean?” I asked disconsolately. “If anything?”

“Nope. Winnie had a stroke right after Charlie went to prison. She was incapacitated and never even used the cookbook after he was sent away. So if she ever did know what the letters meant, she couldn’t tell anybody. Plus, before Charlie was finally caught, he was secretive as all hell, according to lie. Charlie would He about anything. Vic even thought his father would read about crimes, then boast that he was the one who’d committed them. When the James gang went up to Minnesota, Charlie claimed to have been with them. When Butch and Sundance ended up in Bolivia, old Charlie swore he was there, but he escaped.”

“Marvelous. Great reliable source.” I smiled at Cameron. Even if this story wouldn’t help figure anything out, it was good to see him relishing a tale, instead of being angry with me.

Cameron held up a finger, as if he sensed that he wasn’t giving me helpful data. “Wait, though. There is one thing that’s interesting…. Every now and then, old Charlie He’d get remorseful, the way a drunk always does when he sobers up. One morning, Charlie sobbed to Vic that he was sorry he’d been such a rotten father. He’d been a small-time thief, he said, but he’d pulled off one last big heist and never been caught.”

I swallowed the words fish story, and only murmured, “One last heist …”

“On this particular dawn he was feeling very penitent. Old Charlie told his son that he’d never been caught for gettin’ back into his Army of the Confederacy uniform and robbing the last stagecoach that ran in Yellowstone Park.”

“Oh, please.”

Cameron shook his head slowly. “That may actually be the one true boast Charlie Smythe ever made. Although no one knows for certain, of course.”

I sighed. “Right. He made it from Yellowstone back to Blue Spruce on horseback. Alone. Carrying his loot, no doubt. For crying out loud, it takes twenty hours to drive—we’re talking a car, here—from Blue Spruce to Yellowstone. What time of year was it?”

“You want to hear the story or not?”

“Go ahead.”

“Morning of July nineteen, 1915, it was raining hard when the last commercial stagecoach started its run from West Yellowstone on its way to East Yellowstone.”

I grinned. Of course Cameron would know the date, even the weather, for this historic event.

He went on: “Folks weren’t allowed to carry firearms into the park, so the amazing thing is that more of the stagecoaches weren’t robbed. One thief, Ed Trafton, had already been caught for robbing the stagecoach the year before. But old Trafton was sitting in jail when this particular robbery took place.”

I sneaked a peek at my watch and nodded. Ten minutes to go.

“The story gets confused some, whether it was one person or two who did the robbing of that last stagecoach. But one thing’s for sure: Whether it was one or two robbers, he or they wore soldiers’ uniforms. One account says a man seated above the carriage box recognized the robber. Saw him the next day at a dance and called him by name. Called him ‘Charlie.’”

“Uh-huh.”

“And guess who was on that last stagecoach? New York financier Bernard Baruch. The robber got him for fifty dollars.”

“Right. How much did this last stagecoach robbery net, in toto?”

“Five hundred dollars, they say.”

I took a deep breath. “And that’s it?”

“Not quite. The way the story goes, a sixteen-year-old named Eugenia Braintree was on that stagecoach. She was running away from her parents. The Braintrees, very wealthy banking people from Pittsburgh, were feuding with their daughter. Eugenia wanted to work for women’s suffrage. Her parents thought this was a very bad idea. She was headstrong and took off, but not before she’d stolen a ruby necklace, a diamond brooch, and sapphire earrings from her mother. The jewelry was supposed to finance Eugenia’s escape to San Francisco, but it ended up in the robber’s sack with Bernard Baruch’s cash.” He chuckled. “Whoever took that five hundred dollars hit the jackpot with Eugenia’s jewelry. It was worth a fortune. Plus, whoever it was got away and was never caught. Supposedly, the guy named Charlie disappeared from Yellowstone the next day.”

“You seem to know the story pretty well.”

The glee that had suffused Cameron’s face as he told the old legend abruptly left. His voice filled with sadness. “Yeah, I do. But only because Vic had researched it after his father died. The Braintree part he only got from one source, in Pittsburgh. The Braintree parents never reported the robbery, according to this source, for fear that a story of their daughter stealing all that jewelry would somehow cause a run on their big bank in Pittsburgh. Vic didn’t care. All he wanted was the story. He went to great lengths to obtain the front page from the New York Times that ran the article about the robbery, and he framed it. Leah even gave that to the museum. Anyway, in all our hours at the fire station, old Vic told that story well, and often, to the recruits.” Cameron sighed deeply. “It was like Vic didn’t have a father, really. But he had this story.”

“Sounds as if Vic Smythe was like a father to the recruits.”

“He was.”

My thirty minutes were over. “I’d better be going—”

“Listen,” Cameron said hesitantly, “I’m glad you came. You’ve been so nice since Barbara got sick, bringing food, checking on me. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back, but my lawyer …”He exhaled softly, too defeated to finish his thought.

“It’s fine, Cam. If I can figure out this mess, maybe it will help you.”

“You have no idea how much your visit has cheered me up. I didn’t think it would, but it has.”

I tapped the glass. “You’re a good man. And a good friend.”

Cameron Burr looked over his shoulder to see if he was being watched. He lowered his voice and covered the phone with his hand as he said, “Your ex-husband is in here.”

“So you’ve met The Jerk. Poor you.”

“You can’t tell anybody I told you this, ‘cause he’s a guy who gets in fights and I can’t risk that. Plus, he didn’t actually tell me this. It’s what I heard from somebody else, who heard it through the gossip mill, which operates at a pretty hefty clip in here. It relates to what you asked me about when you first came in.”

A familiar queasiness threatened. I tried to sound normal. “Why? What’s going on?”

Cameron Burr’s gritty whisper spiraled through the phone. “He’s trying to get revenge on you and Marla, his other ex-wife.”

“Revenge?”

“Before he got caught for beating up his girlfriend, he was having money troubles. Marla was giving him a hard time, you know how she can be. So he turned her into the IRS. Since he got in here, he’s started bankrolling Craig Litchfield to undercut you. Your ex used your son to get your client list, assignments, schedules, menus, and prices off your computer, to give to your competitor.”

The air conditioner fan whirred overhead. I said, “Thanks, Cameron,” and stood up.

His bloodshot eyes watered. “I hope I can see you again soon.”

“You will,” I promised.

A cool breeze whistled through my half-open windows as I reflected on stagecoach robberies, a rifle in the wall, escape from prosecution, unsolved crimes, and the manipulation of my son, my dear sweet son, to do one of his father’s vicious errands. If I had the rifle from the wall, Charlie Smythe’s escape route between Yellow-stone and Blue Spruce, and John Richard Korman standing in front of me, would I shoot The Jerk and be done with it? Goodness, but it would be tempting. The nerve of that man, to try to wreak revenge on his two ex-wives. Leopards don’t change their spots. Especially those big cats who use power to hurt people.

At a red light, I again called Lutheran Hospital to check on Leah Smythe. A new nurse told me Leah couldn’t talk. But the patient was doing fine. Punching in Marla’s home number on the cell, I swerved out of my lane. I swung back to safety and listened as her phone rang over to her tape.

“It’s me,” I said to the machine. “Yes, I can meet you at the St. Stephen’s parking lot at three-thirty. I’d say more, but I’m afraid the IRS is bugging your phone.” I punched off and called home.

“This is Goldilocks’ Catering,” a male voice answered happily, “but Goldy’s out with the bears right now. Can I help you?”

“Tom, please. How likely is it that potential clients would book me after that greeting?”

“Aha, Miss Happy-go-lucky. You must have had a super time at the jail.”

“How’s my kitchen coming?”

“Great. I know you want to see it, but Arch needs his swimsuit. Julian took him over to Lettie’s, but the suit’s in your van, left there after some lock-in at the rec center two weeks ago, he says. Anyway, you’ll have to wait to see your kitchen until you get the suit to Arch.”

Patience. “Tell me how to get to Rustine and Lettie’s place.”

“Sure. Don’t you want to know what I found out from Sheila?”

“Hold on.” I pulled onto the shoulder under the bridge that overlooked the Continental Divide. Forty miles west of the gloom overhead, the peaks shimmered under a cloak of new snow—another chilly harbinger of the winter to come. I pulled my notepad from my purse. “Go ahead with the directions.”

“The girls live in Aspen Hills, at the western end of Troutman Trail. That’s the third hairpin turn after Brook Drive turns into a dirt road. You taking notes? Pass a For Sale sign, pass a gray house with red trim. Their house is the first place on the right after the last set of mailboxes on Troutman. Brown house, green trim. You get to a dead end, you’ve gone too far.”

“Got it.” If that wasn’t an Aspen Meadow set of directions, I didn’t know what was.

“I called Sheila—”

“Go ahead.” I put my notebook away.

“Remember what you asked about how André took too much medication?”

“Yes.”

“There was a very slight amount of bruising around his mouth, but it is inconclusive. So it is not impossible that he was forced to keep the pills in his mouth, although Sheila still doesn’t think so.”

I checked my rearview mirror and pressed the accelerator to get back on the road. “Thanks, Tom. You’re the best.”

Rain splatted gently across my dusty windshield by the time I reached the western end of Troutman Trail. When I drove up to the very plain-looking brown house with peeling green trim, Lettie and Arch were jumping on the trampoline in the front yard. Julian was nowhere in sight.

I parked under a lodgepole pine and considered my wet-haired, happily leaping son. He was dressed in a clean but faded polo-style white shirt as well as too-large navy shorts—both hand-me-downs from Julian, both now quite wet. He was bouncing on an unstable, steel-framed trampoline, in the rain, when lightning could strike any moment. And all this with a girl, no less. Should I tell him to stop? Or confront him about sharing my confidential client information with The Jerk? Neither. The first could be finessed, the second would wait until we were alone.

“Arch! I don’t know where your suit is! You’ll have to find it.” I pulled open the van door. “Lettie? Are Julian and your sister inside?”

When Lettie nodded, I knocked on the front door. Julian, his finger marking his place in the new edition of The Joy of Cooking, admitted me.

“Catching up on your reading?” I asked.

He blushed. “I brought it with me, along with poached veggies for the girls. Arch ate at home, which is probably a good thing. Have to warn you, this place is a mess. I didn’t feel right about cleaning it up, but I don’t know if Rustine would want you to come in. They had a housekeeper, but she quit a month ago. Anyway, Rustine’s doing some beauty treatment. I hollered to her that you were here.”

“No matter what, I want you to keep an eye on Arch,” I said quietly.

“That’s why I’m sticking around.”

Rustine, sporting newly painted toenails and toes separated by wads of cotton, appeared behind Julian. She was wearing a white shortly robe. Underneath a shower cap, her hair was covered with green goo. Her face was plastered with mud.

I said, “Are you going like that to the rec center?”

She tsked. “It’s almost time to rinse this stuff off. Have you been able to find out who wanted to kill Gerald?”

“May I come in?”

She moved in front of Julian, opened the door, and ushered me into a space so cluttered with furniture and boxes that it was hard to make out where to go. It was a contemporary-design house, with the dining room, living room, and kitchen all open to each other. The dining room table was covered with papers: resumes, letters, files, want ad sections of old newspapers. Every chair in the dusty living room was heaped with boxes of papers.

“Want something to drink?” Rustine eyed the sinkful of dirty dishes, which probably included every glass in the house. “Check the refrig.”

Opening the refrigerator door, I was dazzled by gleaming rows of bottled water, flavored with everything from passion fruit to mango. I looked longingly at the kitchen faucet and ended up choosing water flavored with kiwi. In the living room, Rustine perched on the arm of a once-white, now charcoal gray, wing chair filled with a pile of papers. I sat on a stool close enough to the black wall-to-wall carpeting to see it was embedded with hair and dust. Julian hunkered down on the undusted hearth of a moss-rock fireplace. So much for models living in surroundings as gorgeous as the ones in which they’re photographed.

“Where did you say your dad was?” I ventured.

“I told you, in Alaska, looking for a job. Then he’s going to Orange County, then he’ll be back after Labor Day. If he gets a job, he’s going to hire a new housekeeper.”

Julian closed the cookbook. “You want me to clean up that kitchen for you?”

“No, thanks,” she said dismissively.

“Aw, I’m used to doing dishes.” He grinned and made for the kitchen. “That way you can ask Goldy about your former boyfriend and not be embarrassed.”

“I’m not embarrassed.” She watched Julian filling the sink with hot sudsy water, though, then stood up and beckoned for me to follow. A few minutes later I was perched on the edge of a tub in a large, messy bathroom tiled in avocado and lemon, While Rustine rinsed the mud off her face. As she was patting her cheeks with a dingy towel, she said, “I just need another few minutes for my conditioner, then Julian and I will take the kids swimming. That’s okay, isn’t it?” I nodded. She went on: “So, what have you been able to find out about Gerald?”

Two things I had learned from Tom: always take charge of an interrogation. Even when you’re sitting on a tub. And when you think a criminal might have done something, first pose a question he can truthfully deny, then ask him what you really want to know. If he hesitates, you’ve got him.

I studied Rustine’s reflection in the mirror. “Are you the one who’s been sabotaging my food up at the cabin?”

“No! What sabotage?”

I kept my eyes on her. “Foreign matter has appeared in the food. Whoever’s putting it there might have sabotaged André, too. I suspect Craig Litchfield’s behind it.”

“Well, I’m not the one doing it. And it sounds disgusting. I’m going to stop eating your food!”

“Rustine, you told Tom and me that Gerald Eliot found a weapon. Then you immediately asked us if we’d found out some secret about Charlie Smythe. But it was a rifle Eliot found, and something told you it was Smythe’s, right? You were Gerald’s girlfriend. I think you know a lot more about what he found.”

Rustine reddened; she checked her eyelids for specks of mud before responding. “I didn’t say … I don’t remember saying—”

“Cut the crap.”

“I—” She sighed. “Okay. Gerry found Charlie Smythe’s old rifle. You’ve seen it on the wall of the cabin’s great room, haven’t you? Leah put it there.”

“What else? Tell me. Otherwise I’ll call the department. You’ll be arrested for withholding evidence in a murder case faster than you can say anorexia nervosa”

She tapped the side of the sink, thought for a moment, then shrugged. “All right. I used to be at the cabin with Gerry, kind of keeping him company, you know, when he was working. It was fun to watch, all that destruction. He’d take off his shirt, Mr. Rippling Muscles, you know—” She giggled, then said, “He pulled everything away from the wall, and used his sledgehammer to rip the plaster off the kitchen wall. When he got to the laths underneath—”

“I don’t need a course in construction, thanks.”

She pulled the shower cap off and checked her hair. “Right. Tucked between the laths, he found this … package, wrapped in oilcloth. He was really excited, and kind of afraid, too. Like he’d discovered a ghost or something. Inside the oilcloth was this old rifle. But Rufus barged in right after Gerry unwrapped the rifle. So Gerry had to give it to Rufus, who left to give it to Leah and Ian. Gerry felt … gypped.”

“So you knew all about the rifle, but you only told us it was a weapon. What exactly were you looking for up at Cameron Burr’s place?”

“I need to rinse my hair—”

“You want me to call the sheriffs department? Then you can rinse it in the jail shower.”

She turned red. “I was looking for Winnie Smythe’s cookbook, okay?” I waited. “After he’d found the rifle, Gerry came across something else in the wall. It was also a package, and it was wrapped in oilcloth, too. It was … a note from a man to his wife. From Charlie to Winnie.”

“Do you have it?”

She ran her fingers through her slick hair. “No.”

She was lying. “So help me, Rustine—”

“Oh, all right, I have a photocopy that Gerry made. He thought the letter was going to make us rich, and all it did was get him killed. I figured if you could find out who really killed him, or where the cookbook was, then I could … If I help you, will you split what you find with me?”

“Rustine! Show me the note and tell me why you need the damn cookbook!”

“Just listen for a sec. Gerry was so excited about finding this stuff, he was asking all around about the history of the cabin. Everybody knew he was on to something!”

“Would you please give me that note?”

Her excited eyes met mine. Again I recalled her first appearance in the cabin kitchen. You’re the caterer who figures things out.

Rustine’s medicine cabinet door squeaked when she opened it. She pulled out a folded, zippered plastic bag and handed it to me.

Chapter 21

“Mom!” called Arch from the door. “I found my suit. Can Rustine take us swimming now? We’re ready.”

“Can you just … hold off for a few minutes, hon? We’re talking.”

“Let me show you my ham radio,” Lettie added. “Does yours still work?”

“No,” I heard Arch reply. “How do you keep your antenna on your roof?” Their footsteps pattered down the hallway.

I pulled a folded sheet of paper out of the zippered makeup bag. The handwriting, with its bold pen marks, was identical to the handwriting on the letter from Leavenworth:My Dear Wife,

You are my Treasure and I am yours. If there ever comes a time when I am in Heaven and you want me, you know you have only to use my Rifle and your Cookery book, and make the Rolls as I showed you.

Thus will you have our Treasure.

Your Loving Husband

“Well, now, that makes a lot of sense,” I said after I’d read the note twice. “Use the rifle. Make the rolls according to a certain recipe. Then you’ll be rich. Do you stir the batter with the rifle butt? And would that be Parker House or cloverleaf rolls?”

Rustine shrugged. “I just wish I knew who else Gerry showed the note to. Or who has that cookbook. We have to have the cookbook!”

I stood up. No need to mention the photocopies to Rustine. I said, “I need to take this to my husband.”

I missed Arch on the way out, which was probably just as well. In the kitchen, Julian was up to his elbows in sudsy water, singing an a cappella riff on “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Just like André, I thought with a smile, although Julian probably didn’t even realize it. He’d somehow cleared off a spot on the cluttered counter, laid down a dish towel, and heaped up a pile of washed and rinsed pans to drip-dry.

“Please have Arch home by three,” I asked him. “The service for André is at four.”

He nodded, and I took off for home. To my astonishment, Tom had finished the plumbing and put in the rest of the bottom cabinets. This is what it must be like to have a contractor who works full-time, I mused. Without a counter, our kitchen still looked like a dusty warehouse, but at least it was beginning to take on the look of a culinary warehouse.

While I looked for lunch fixings, Tom washed his hands, poured a glass of water, and stared at the note I’d given him. “Why in the world didn’t Rustine tell us about this? It affects a murder case, for crying out loud.”

“She was hoping to cash in, once we found out what was going on.” I handed him a wobbly paper plate containing one of two peanut-butter-and-cherry-preserves brioche-toast sandwiches I’d just made fresh in our cramped dining room space. It didn’t look very fancy, but when I hungrily bit into mine, the crunch of homemade toast mingling with slightly melted peanut butter and sweet cherry preserves was out of this world. Now all I needed was an iced latte to go with it.

“This is delicious.” He wolfed his down and reached for the phone to call the sheriff’s department. “You know they’re going to come get this,” he informed me. “And they’re going to want to question Rustine.”

I shrugged. It was time to get ready for Andre’s service. I made a slick fax-copy of the note for my own file. It wasn’t ideal, but with needing to shower and change, I didn’t have time to go to the library and photocopy more copies of stolen historical documents.

In a black Chanel suit and spectator pumps, her freshly coiffed curls tucked behind rhinestone-and-onyx earrings, Marla had morphed back to her old self when I found her in the parking lot of St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church. The rain had stopped, but my irascible friend lofted her Louis Vuitton umbrella over her head in triumph.

“I’m done, I’m finished!” she sang. Her peaches-and-cream complexion was flushed with joy. She bustled up to my van. “The IRS guys left today, saying I’d hear from them soon. I said, ‘How ’bout never?’ They weren’t amused. But here’s the deal: they think I’m going to get a refund!”

I hugged her tightly and felt unexpected tears burn. “Oh, Marla. I’ve missed you so much. And there’s something I have to tell you, but you weren’t feeling well, and I wanted to wait until your audit was over, because—”

“Calm down, will you? I can’t listen to whatever it is until I’ve had some food. Let’s see if the guys from Andre’s old restaurant have any goodies set up yet. Where’s Arch?”

“Tom’s bringing him. And the food is for afterwards!”

“You want my stomach to growl through the service?” she threatened as she linked her arm through mine and led me up the steps. “Have to tell you, Goldy, one of those IRS agents was kind of cute.” Her voice turned wistful;. “I suppose it’s unethical for him to date an accused tax-chiseler…. And if he did ask me out, I’d have to wonder. I mean, now he knows I’m rich.”

We entered the parish hall, a long, vaulted-ceiling addition to the ultramodern church. The enticing scents of roasted ham, chicken, pork, and beef wafted toward us. My heart tugged as I waved at two of the servers I knew from the old restaurant days with André. After Marla had deftly nabbed a couple of what looked like André’s Grand Marnier Buttercream Cookies, I steered her into the stone vestibule. There, lanky, balding Monsignor Fields talked in a hushed tone with Pru Hibbard and Wanda Cooney.

“What I want to tell you is this,” I whispered to Marla as she munched on her cookies. “John Richard has been, and is, trying to get revenge on us. He turned you in to the IRS before he went to jail, and he’s been bankrolling Craig Litchfield from jail.”

Her beautiful brown eyes widened with shock. She swallowed the last mouthful of cookie. “Revenge on us? For what? That son of a bitch!” she hissed. “I’ll kill him!”

“Don’t start!” I warned as I sent the startled monsignor a conciliatory nod. I tugged Marla into the airy, modern church. Because Saint Stephen had been martyred by stoning, the only decoration on the high, pale blue walls was a mass of irregular stone-shaped windows filled with pale blue stained glass. Light abruptly flooded the windows as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. The wall suddenly resembled a jeweler’s cloth strewn with aquamarines. “Look, Marla,” I said softly, “I just wanted you to know he’s being vengeful. In case anything else unexpected happens. Are you vulnerable in any other way?”

“The hell with vulnerable.” She slid into a pew and smoothed the Chanel suit. “That creep has so much money to throw around, I’ll sue him myself. And don’t tell me you can’t sue somebody in jail, because I will find a way. Oh, I can’t wait.” She patted my knee. “Now, I have good news for you. Litchfield’s dinner for Weezie was dreadful. I know because I sneaked out on the IRS and went—as an invited guest, but of course as a spy, too, once I’d found out she’d canceled you. Anyway, he tried to cheat her—naughty, naughty. Weezie had ordered poached salmon from him. He made coulibiac, which everybody knows is a carbo-load made from bits of salmon sandwiched between crepes and covered with brioche. I heard that Weezie now suspects he had the salmon left over from another job. And get this: She wants Andy Fuller to investigate!”

So. Maybe instead of bothering my husband, Andy Fuller would be investigating Craig Litchfield’s fraudulent use of salmon? Now that was what I called having bigger fish to fry, I thought, as an usher handed us each a service leaflet for the memorial service.

“There’s more,” Marla whispered conspiratorially as the pews around us began to fill. “Weezie wanted a buffet. Craig insisted on a sit-down affair so he could limit portions. Worse, he inflated every dish with either frozen chopped spinach or—you’re going to die—bread stuffing. Even the pasta had bread crumbs in it.” She unsuccessfully suppressed a giggle. The woman on the other side of me looked up and glared. But Marla went on happily, “Edna Hardcastle is in for a huge surprise on Saturday. Maybe she’ll call and rehire you at the last minute.”

“Maybe her daughter will cancel her wedding again.”

Marla laughed out loud at the prospect of a wedding that might be postponed a third time; the woman glowered; I shrugged apologetically. Life in Aspen Meadow is never dull.

Tom, Arch, and Julian slid in next to us. Pru had been accompanied by Wanda Cooney to the front. The widow had apparently made the decision not to have her husband’s coffin present. Arch gave my shoulder a quick squeeze when the organ began to play.

An altar boy had opened the side door overlooking the mountains. A breeze scented with pine wafted over us. The huge church was about half filled with mourners, which I found gratifying. André had touched a number of people, despite his eccentric ways and long-winded tales of his own history, real or imagined. While the lessons from Isaiah and Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians were read, I prayed for my teacher. I gave thanks that he had given me the gift of cooking as a way to care for people. I gave thanks that he’d come into my life just when I’d needed him.

The monsignor gave a brief homily on not fearing death. He took his seat, and the congregation waited. According to the service leaflet, a remembrance was to be offered by Rabbi Sol Horowitz. This was something I’d never heard of in a Roman Catholic church, and I mentally gave them points for open-mindedness. After a few moments, a stooped, white-haired man shook off offers of assistance and climbed to the pulpit.

“The organist has agreed to help me,” the rabbi began in a heavy accent. We waited, but no music was forthcoming. The rabbi pursed his lips, looked out over the congregation, then opened a folded sheet.

“This is my remembrance, from the time of the war.” Holding the sheet with one hand, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. “In my brother’s town of Clermont-Ferrand, André Hibbard was a fearless Resistance fighter, despite the fact that he was but eleven years old. Although André was a child, he hated the Nazis, and he helped my brother and his wife avoid deportation to the camps.” The rabbi faltered, then went on.

“André Hibbard concealed my brother and his wife, an Italian Jew, in a barn. My brother was a violinist. Every day, André brought them cheese and milk.” The rabbi cleared his throat. “The Resistance was organized, and they taught codes to all their trainees. But André had no radio, of course. So when the trains to take the Jews away arrived, André Hibbard used music to alert my brother’s family. If there was danger, André would whistle ‘Für Elise’ to my brother.” Rabbi Horowitz waited While the rippling notes of Beethoven’s tune rolled through the blue-lit church.

When the organ music faded, the congregation was still. Rabbi Horowitz went on: “One night, a man waited to take my brother and his family out, to try to get them to Switzerland, to safety. Andre’s job was to watch for the Nazis and whistle again to my brother’s family, to indicate it was safe to move. The tune he chose was from Felix Mendelssohn.”

The entire congregation listened intently as the organ pealed forth with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Marla’s face brightened. Arch smiled broadly. The rabbi folded his paper and pocketed it with the handkerchief. He grinned and nodded down at us.

“With the help of André Hibbard, my brother and his wife escaped to Zurich. After playing many years with the Boston Symphony, my brother retired. Last year, he died. But he always made a good joke, about how the French boy fooled the Nazis, by using a Christian hymn to save a family of Jews.”

The congregation broke into spontaneous applause as Rabbi Horowitz found his seat. Visibly moved, the monsignor led us through the Lord’s Prayer, the intercessions, additional prayers, and the final commendation and blessing. One of the cooks from André’s old restaurant led Pru down the nave. The congregation followed. As we all filed out, the organist broke into an enthusiastic, multiversed rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

After the service, I dimly registered Monsignor Fields walking toward me across the church’s large patio. Marla was eating, but I couldn’t. I was sitting on the patio’s stone wall—in a state of shock, I think—realizing that the stories André had told, the stories that I’d doubted, that I’d only been half listening to—had been true. The monsignor interrupted my thoughts.

“Pru is extremely tired. She does not want to stay for the reception, but she would like to visit with you at her condominium, if you feel up to driving out there.” He seemed almost apologetic.

“I’d love to.”

When I told Tom where I was going, he chuckled. “I told the boys this buffet food was it for dinner, so we’ll be here for a While.”

On the way to Blue Spruce, dark-bellied clouds again gathered and spit raindrops on my van as I followed Wanda and Pru in Wanda’s Suburban. André had indeed been a Resistance fighter, I thought with newfound admiration. He was a genuine hero. I felt like a better person, just from knowing him. I turned on the wipers as the road snaked beside a creek edged with cottonwoods and will daisies bowed by the rain. A golden eagle soared gracefully downward, then skimmed the tops of the lodgepole pines before disappearing from view. I braked as Wanda slowed to enter the Blue Spruce Retirement Village.

“I’m going to go take a shower, if you don’t mind,” Wanda confided once she had Pru settled on a chaise longue in her sitting room. We were standing in the small condo kitchen. “There’s something about a funeral that just … makes me want to get out of my clothes and start over.” She placed Andre’s old tea ball stuffed with leaves into one of the many teapots and checked the water she’d set on to boil. “You’ll tend to her if she needs anything? She just wanted to see you again, since you’ve called so many times.”

“No problem,” I said softly. “It’s unlikely our visit will be disrupted by visitors this time. Has anyone called to bother you in the last week?”

“Two more real estate agents appeared, plus that horrible caterer dropped by again.” She shuddered and carefully poured the steaming water over the tea ball. The scent of orange and black pekoe wafted upward. “I told Litchfield if he had the nerve to come here again I’d report him to the police. He hasn’t been back.”

“Wanda,” I said suddenly as I glanced around the kitchen, “where are André’s cooking tools?”

“You mean the ones he kept in his red box?” When I nodded, she answered, “The police brought them back, along with his apron and pans. Pru had me put them in the spare bedroom. Why?”

“No reason.” I took the tray. “Thanks for the tea.”

Pru was fast asleep by the time I returned to her sitting room. With her head tilted back, her mouth slightly open, she looked as young and innocent as a bride. I put the tray down and sat on an ottoman by the chaise lounge. When I heard the shower water running, I quickly went looking for the spare bedroom.

It was upstairs, a spotless, sparsely decorated room featuring white curtains and chenille bedspreads. My heartbeat sped up as I pulled open the closet door and heard it creak. I held my breath; Wanda’s shower continued to run. André’s red metal chef’s toolbox had been placed on the floor of the closet.

The old metal hinge squeaked when I cracked back the top. Again I froze and waited for some response in the house, but heard only running water. I opened the partitions of the box that I knew so well: butcher and paring knives, balloon whisks, can openers, butter-ball scoop, vegetable brushes and peelers, garlic press, spatulas of all sizes, old wooden spoons. Only one item was missing: André’s salamander.

Although André had never used the bottom compartment for tools—he liked having his tools out where he could see them—I lifted the top layer just to see if I’d missed something. The spoons clanked and the metal layer scraped the sides of the box as I heaved the compartment free. When it was finally out, I gaped, uncomprehending, into the bottom of the box.

There was what I sought: Andre’s salamander. But next to it was a tool I’d certainly never seen André use in a kitchen: a crowbar.

Chapter 22

What to do? My thoughts raced. I did a double-check of all the tools; nothing else was unusual or out of place. The water stopped. I hastily closed the box, slid it back into place, shut the closet door, and descended the stairs on tiptoe. Pru slumbered on. I poured two cups of ultrastrong room-temperature tea and slugged one down. When Wanda reappeared, I motioned toward Pru and then whispered that I would find my way out.

I sprinted to the van and drove back to our house. Tom and the boys were not yet back from the reception. Hunger knotted my stomach. Cook, I told myself. That will help you figure this out.

Cook? I surveyed the buckled rectangles of plywood that covered two thirds of the counter area; the rest was just gaping holes revealing cabinet drawers. The new floor, still unfinished, looked like it belonged in a barn. I did not have the foggiest idea where my recipes were, but I knew Arch well enough to predict that no matter how much food they had at the reception, he would want dinner. Not because he was hungry, but because the comfort of order, including meals served at regular times, had been one of the ways he’d restructured his universe after our family life had first fallen apart. So I decided to make Slumber Party Potatoes, his favorite.

Within ten minutes, I had started bacon cooking, scrubbed four potatoes in the main-floor bathroom, shuttled them along with washed broccoli out to the kitchen, and placed them in the oven. I trimmed the broccoli stems and set them in a small amount of boiling water just as the thick slices of bacon began bubbling in my sauté pan. Despite a messed-up kitchen, despite Craig Litchfield’s attempts to undermine my business, I still loved to cook.

Craig Litchfield. He’d shown up in the most unlikely places, including at André’s house the day he died. I knew he was a smarmy competitor, but was he engaged in something even more sinister than stealing clients? Someone was sabotaging my food up at the cabin. I was fairly certain the same vindictive prank had been played on André. Could the prankster be Craig Litchfield? Could Litchfield have been so insane as to get through the locked gate, or climb the fence of the Merciful Migrations property, to try to harm a competitor? Or could he have hired someone to do it? And could that person have meant merely to scare André and gone too far? I couldn’t believe that Craig Litchfield would be willing to take a homicide rap, but then again, as I’d learned so often with The Jerk, some folks won’t hesitate to use violence in order to get their way.

I turned the sputtering bacon slices. Fat popped in the pan, and a tiny, stinging droplet spattered my forearm. I frowned and rubbed the spot. That first morning we had worked together at the cabin, André had given me such meticulous instructions in caramelizing—“burning sugar”—for that day’s dessert. He was always careful in the kitchen, citing tales of cooks who had sliced fingers or burned their hands or faces. He’d warned me repeatedly about burns. So, on the morning he died, I’d say the chances he had burned himself with his own salamander were slim, unless he had had cardiac symptoms while he was doing the caramelizing.

I finished flipping the bacon and turned down the heat. So the burns on his hands still bothered me. What else? The fact that he was even preparing more crème brûlées that day was a puzzle. André always brought backup food. So why would he have been making still more crème brûlées in the kitchen? Had he come to the cabin to prep the fruit, and then been told he needed to make a lot more custards? Who could have delivered this message, and when? Had that same person interrupted André as he was making the crèmes? Maybe even seen him using the fiery-hot salamander? And why had André, or someone else, hidden or stored the salamander and a crowbar in his toolbox? Had the crowbar been used as a weapon, or for something else?

I turned off the heat under the broccoli and tried to envision André that last morning. Maybe he’d been working in the kitchen and heard somebody in the great room. Could he have seen someone tinkering with the flat that so nearly crushed Leah? Maybe he’d seen or heard something, picked up a crowbar, tiptoed out to the great room, and … And what? And tried to hurt somebody with it? What about the hot salamander? And the nitroglycerin? Were the slight bruises in his mouth nothing, as the coroner seemed to think? Or had someone forced him to swallow the pills?

I drained the fragrant, sputtering bacon slices and the bright green steamed broccoli florets, and tried to construct a different scenario. What if André had brought the crowbar with him, in order to try to find something? That would surely explain why he’d come early, with all the food made in advance. But what would he have been seeking? André had never seen the letter hidden in the old wall, the letter which had pointed toward using Winnie’s stolen cookbook to make rolls. To find treasure. He had never shown the least interest in either American history or weapons, and it seemed highly unlikely he had any regard for Charlie Smythe’s old rifle. But he had had some glimmer of what was going on when he’d asked for a photocopy of Winnie Smythe’s cookbook. Why? What made the cookbook so important? If André had known something—something Gerald Eliot had known, too—what could it have been?

Slumber Party Potatoes

4 large baking potatoes

2 tablespoons (¼ stick) butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon chicken broth granules

1½ cups milk

1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

1 pound fresh broccoli, trimmed of stems and separated into florets, lightly steamed

1 pound thick-sliced bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Scrub and prick the potatoes in 3 or places with a fork. Bake them for about 1 hour, or until flaky.

While the potatoes are baking, melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat. Stir in the flour; cook and stir just until the flour bubbles, 2 or 3 minutes. Add the chicken broth granules, stir, and then gently whisk in the milk. Heat and stir constantly over medium heat until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the cheese and stir until it melts, 2 or 3 minutes.

Split each of the hot potatoes in half and place them on a platter. Place the steamed broccoli florets and chopped bacon into bowls. Pour the cheese sauce into a large gravy boat. Diners serve themselves assemblyline style, ending with the cheese sauce.

Makes 4 to 8 servings

I cut a stick of butter in half and set it to melt in another pan for the cheese sauce. Had there been a tidbit of gossip André was waiting to share with me—something that had made someone on the set dislike Leah enough to try to kill her? I turned that over in my mind for a moment, and discarded it. Any gossip he had, he would have told me instantly as soon as the paramedics left on Friday, when we worked together. That day, instead, he’d clucked sympathetically to Sylvia’s tale of woe about the robbery. He’d talked to Julian about his work with the Resistance during the war, and helped us prepare and serve the coffee break goodies. What else? André had gasped later in the morning. I’d thought he was having another attack. But he hadn’t been.

I quickly grated a heap of Cheddar cheese. What had immediately preceded this appearance of a seizure at the museum? He’d been staring with a disconcerting intensity at the smashed cupboard which had held the missing cookbooks. What else? He had read Charlie Smythe’s letter to Winnie from Leavenworth. So what?

I stirred flour into the butter for a roux, and waited until that mixture bubbled over low heat. Gently cook the flour, André had admonished me so many times, gentleness is one of the secrets of the sauce. I added seasonings and hot milk to the roux and delicately whisked the sauce. Outside, Tom’s car turned into the driveway. I stirred the cheese into the thickened sauce and watched it turn golden.

“Oh, Mom, thanks!” cried Arch, dashing into the kitchen. “Slumber Party Potatoes, and we’re not even having a slumber party!”

Tom kissed and hugged me and announced that he’d had plenty to eat, and that he had some work to do in the kitchen. Was there any way Arch and Julian and I could eat outside? Arch said he needed to feed Jake and Scout and give them fresh water. Julian quickly offered to help me set up on the deck. When we finally had scraped the outdoor chairs together, covered the picnic table with a bright tablecloth, set out silverware, plates, bowls of crisp bacon, steamed broccoli, hot cheese sauce, and steaming potatoes, Julian abruptly declared that he needed a break and was going to go back to the rec center to swim laps. He left without eating a bite.

I raised my eyebrows at Arch, who had finished his animal care duties. “Any reason for the sudden interest in swimming?”

Arch dabbed cheese sauce on half a potato and licked his fingers. “Rustine’s not there, if that’s what you’re asking, Mom. Rustine said there was too much chlorine in the pool, and it would wreck her hair, so she didn’t go in. Neither did Julian. And Lettie saw some friends from school, so she didn’t really talk to me very much.”

“Arch,” I said, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Oh, brother. Now what?”

“Did you print out my client list and all my schedules, assignments, and prices for your father?”

“No! No way!”

“Did you print it out for anybody?”

“Yeah,” he said immediately. “That guy who’s trying to do Dad’s finances? Hugh Leland? Mr. Leland called when you were on a job. He said he couldn’t figure Dad’s portion of my tuition at Elk Park Prep While he was in jail until I faxed him a copy of your client list and prices, to verify that you couldn’t pay the tuition.”

“Arch, that is complete baloney. Your dad pays the tuition, as ordered by the court.”

“Well, that’s not what Mr. Leland said, Mom.”

“Please, hon. Please don’t give out any information about me, or us, or the business, to anyone.” I heard the sharpness in my voice, but couldn’t suppress it.

“I’m sorry.” Arch looked stricken. “I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do, Mom.”

I swallowed my anger. Despite what he had done, it was impossible to blame my son: He’d just been trying to help. And yet, John Richard’s ability to manipulate him appalled me. I glanced upward, trying desperately to think of something else to talk about. On the roof, Arch’s ham radio antenna still dangled like a forgotten spider web. “How was Lettie’s ham radio set? Did it work any better than yours?”

Arch set his plate aside, the food virtually untouched. “Look, Mom, I know you really want me to be happy and all that, but don’t ask me a bunch of questions about Lettie, okay? Please?”

“Sure.” He was at an age where trying to establish a conversation was as treacherous as navigating a mine field. I was forever veering away from one subject where I was tempted to give advice, to another, where I would have to bite my tongue not to lecture. I looked up again at the forlorn antenna, the remnants of Arch’s first obsession with high-tech encryption. Wait a minute.

Arch had always been fascinated by a bit of history told him by Julian, whose adoptive parents in Utah had taught him to speak Navajo. During the Second World War, Navajos serving in the American military had spoken in their own language, over the radio, to other Navajo soldiers, who’d passed on details of troop movements and other matters of military importance to Allied military intelligence. Navajo is one of the most difficult languages in the world. It was a code never broken by the Germans.

What was the one thing everyone said about Charlie Smythe? He was a signalman for the Confederacy….

Rabbi Horowitz had told us: The Resistance … taught codes to all their trainees.

One of the secrets of the sauce … André had never seen the cookbook or the letter in the wall. But he had seen the enigmatic letter from Leavenworth, the later letter Charlie Smythe had written to his wife … not the earlier letter, which had remained hidden in the wall all these years.

“Arch,” I said suddenly. “You know your work with telephone encryption? Did you ever learn any codes that are universal? I mean, besides Morse.”

He eyed me. “There are codes and ciphers that have been used over and over. But the question isn’t whether you can put something into a code, Mom. The question is whether the person receiving it can understand it.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and tilted his chin. “Why?”

“If I showed you a letter that a man wrote from prison, that might be in a fairly common code, do you think you could read it?”

“Is it in English?” he asked dubiously.

I told him that it was and ran inside for my file. When I handed Arch the photocopy of Charlie Smythe’s letter to his wife from prison, he pondered it, chewed his tongue, then reread the paper in his hands. He did not know that Winnie Smythe, incapacitated by stroke, probably never had understood the letter. He did not know the history of the Smythe cabin. He did not know about the aborted remodeling work that Gerald Eliot had begun there. So it was with true astonishment that I heard Arch’s next set of questions.

“So. Did this woman, Winnie, tear out her kitchen wall? Did she use a”—he peered down at the letter—“cookery book? Is that a cookbook?” I nodded, speechless. “And let’s see—this guy’s gun? To find some treasure?”

“Show me,” I whispered.

“It’s a real common code, Mom. It’s one a lot of prisoners used over the years, because it usually gets past censors.” He pointed to the paper and I read it again.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

Arch said, “You just read the first two words in each line. So it’s: You must tear out wall in cabin kitchen use cookery book skytales rifle find riches.” He paused. “Did this lady know the code?”

“No. At least, I don’t think so.” If she had been able to act on the letter, Winnie would surely have found the precious rifle her husband had so carefully hidden in the wall. “What’s a skytale?”

“It’s another way of encoding a message, Mom. It’s been used for a really long time. Say you have a message. You write it on a long, thin piece of paper. That’s called the plaintext, that you wrap around a cylinder of a certain size; that’s called a skytale. But on your plaintext, you put lots of numbers or letters in between your message, so that nobody can read what you’re saying, see? The person who’s decoding the message rolls your sheet of letters or numbers around the skytale cylinder. Then the extra numbers or letters aren’t seen. Just the one line of letters is seen, and that’s your message. Get it? The trick, once you have a strip of paper, is to know which cylinder to roll it around.”

I remembered Rustine’s copy of the note in the wall: Make the Rolls as I showed you. It wasn’t bread Smythe referred to, but strips of paper. I closed my eyes and shook my head.

Arch asked, “Do you have the cookbook?”

“I have a copy. There are letters written on two of the pages. They must form the strip of words, somehow.” My heartbeat sounded loud in my ears.

“What about this rifle?”

“It’s up at the cabin where I’m catering tomorrow. Where André was working.” I did not add when he died.

My son’s eyes were solemn. “Do you think Chef André knew the code in the letter from prison?”

I remembered André gasping, staggering, looking triumphant and secretive when he read the letter. “Yeah, I do.” And he needed money, I added mentally; he’d complained about his wife’s bills and the cost of living in Aspen Meadow. The chance of finding a treasure isn’t something he would have told me about. Besides, he just didn’t know how much money, or how little, might be hidden out at the Smythe cabin. But he’d taken a crowbar with him to the cabin and tried to get behind the kitchen wall. And someone had discovered him, I was convinced.

“What about Leah Smythe?” Arch asked. “Do you think she read it and that’s why the flat fell on her?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know, Arch. Hon, don’t worry about it. André was getting on in years and had heart problems. I think a clamp came loose somehow and Leah was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” If I focused on the possibility of danger at a site, Arch would fret about my catering away from home. His fear would not be expressed in begging me to stay home, but only in pained looks and agonized questions: When will you be back? What if something goes wrong? In addition to all my other problems, I did not want to worry that Arch was anxious about my safety.

Arch had turned away to look at a butterfly perched on the deck railing. It was a monarch. The butterfly clapped its black-edged, dark orange wings slowly, soundlessly, before lifting from its perch and drifting down to die picnic table.

“It’s lost,” Arch announced. He pressed his lips together. “So. Do you want me to look at these two cookbook pages? I could see if I could cut it into plaintext to wrap around a skytale for you, if you want.”

“Sure.” I scrambled up. “That would be fun. Maybe you and Tom could do it together.”

“The two of you seem pretty excited,” Tom said when we came into the kitchen. “Why don’t you let me do these dishes? You guys go get an ice cream in town.”

“Forget the dishes,” I told him. “Arch has just figured out an interesting aspect of the Smythe history.”

I grabbed the pages of letters from the bread and pudding recipes in The Practical Cook Book, and began to make copies with my fax machine. Through the evening, Tom, Arch, and I photocopied, cut, and taped together strips. We made strips of the letters horizontally, vertically, and sideways. My kitchen began to look as if a confetti parade had marched through a bomb site. Finally we had several dozen strips constructed. While Tom pried open the garage wall and pulled out his Winchester ‘94,1 brought a sour cream coffee cake out of the freezer to defrost for the next day’s catering.

We took turns wrapping strips one way and the other around the rifle. It took us hours to assemble long and short lines of nonsense. Julian came home and joined us, asking questions, offering suggestions, sharing our excitement.

Finally, close to exhaustion and ready to concede defeat, Arch had the idea to make a strip from all the vertical rows of letters on the Parker House Rolls and the bread pudding pages, and wrap them around the rifle’s magazine, the ammunition-storage cylinder under the barrel. This gave him a very long string of letters, the longest yet.

“Hold on,” Arch ordered. The slippery fax paper scritched and slid across the gray metal of the gun as Arch nudged it into place. Then, triumphantly, he showed us Charlie’s message to his wife.

UNDER THE ELEPHANT ROCK.

Chapter 23

“Well, I am impressed.” Tom patted Arch on the back, and he beamed. “And I know that when Sylvia Bevans hears that Leah might loan her museum a stash that’s been buried for eighty-some years, even she will be ecstatic.”

Arch’s face fell. “You mean we don’t get to keep whatever’s there?”

Tom, Julian, and I laughed. I told him if there was anything there, it would belong to the robbery victims’ descendants, if any could be found. Arch asked if he could call Lettie to tell her the news. No way, Tom informed him, you can’t tell anybody. Disappointed, but still savoring the victory of breaking the codes, Arch retired to his room with Julian to play music. Listening to the muffled thud of rock-and-roll, I took a hot bath and thought about the painful events of the past eleven days.

“You know I’m going to have to report what Arch figured out,” Tom told me, joining me later in the bedroom.

He had taken a shower after my bath, and now rubbed his wet, sandy-colored hair with a towel. The room was luminous with moonlight. Outside, a breeze shuffled the pines. It was late, and I was bone-tired.

“Of course. But at the moment, no one knows except us.” I patted the clean sheets, made lustrous in the creamy light. “I have one day of catering left at the cabin.”

The bed creaked as Tom got in. He pulled me close. “Uh, Miss G.? You should cancel for tomorrow.” He kissed my ear and I shivered. “And if you must go, Boyd’s coming with you again, no argument. Somebody on that photo shoot could be, probably is, a killer.”

“Listen. I know something now. And what it is, I think, is the location of some very valuable jewelry, plus about five hundred dollars in cash, heisted from the last stagecoach to run in Yellowstone Park.” Tom’s embrace muddled my thinking, but I didn’t mind. “All hidden away,” I pressed on, “by a guy who was a signalman, a thief, and a rotten father.”

He kissed my neck. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Wait. You’re making it hard for me to think. What else I know is that someone is trying to sabotage my food. I need to figure out who it is, or face a risk whenever I do a booking.”

His hands touched the small of my back and I nuzzled against him. “Goldy, stop nosing around in old crimes. Just finish your job.”

“I might say the same for you, Mr. Contractor.”

He groaned. “Don’t joke.”

I kissed him. “I’m not.”

And then we made love, and for a While, I forgot all my problems, even my wrecked kitchen.

A brief rain shower swept in very early the next morning. When I looked out, the leaves on the neighborhood aspen trees sparkled and drooped with their weight of water. Freshly stretched from yoga, and dressed in my caterer’s uniform, I swallowed a few greedy breaths of cold, moist air before shutting the window.

Coffee break and lunch. I had the coffee break food ready to go—defrosted sour cream coffee cake, Cointreau French toast, strawberry and banana kabobs, cottage cheese mixed with mandarin oranges. For lunch, we would be serving an array of cold cuts and brioche. Julian had promised to make a soup and salad. We were also thawing some Blondes’ Blondies made earlier in the week, while I turned over ideas on how to catch a saboteur. In that department, I’d had a couple of thoughts during the night.

When I entered the cluttered, unfinished kitchen, Julian immediately handed me a hot espresso dosed with cream. I took the coffee with my usual gratitude. Through the trio of glittering new windows, I watched Jake and Scout cavort in the bloodhound version of cat-and-mouse. It was as if the move into colder weather brought out more energy in the animals: Have fun now, before two feet of snow prevent us from romping around. The delicious smell of baking puff pastry made me turn around.

“What are you making?” I asked Julian.

Snappily dressed in black with a white apron, his hair still damp from his shower, Julian gave me a quick grin, then went back to stirring. “Forget the soup. I’m heating the hors d’oeuvre from the wedding reception we’re not doing. And a crab dip.” His dark eyebrows knit as he cocked his head and studied my face. “What’s wrong? Andre’s memorial service got you down?”

“Yeah, a bit. Plus, the last day of a job, you always feel kind of sad.” Especially when you don’t know who’s dumping garbage in your food, how your teacher met his death, or why one of your clients was almost squashed by a falling flat.

Julian, less obsessed with crime and criminals, turned his attention back to the hot dip. “Just think of the check you’re going to get at the end. That’s what I always do. Our boxes are packed, by the way. As soon as the first batch of appetizers is done, I’ll cool it down and we can go.” I slugged down the espresso, picked up the first box, and felt my shoulders and back strain from the weight. What had Julian said? Think of the check. Sure. If I was not mistaken, thinking about the money had produced a great deal too much illicit activity in the last month.

Sergeant Boyd was waiting for us at the library, steel thermos in hand. He had circles under his eyes. His feet hurt, he said. The sergeant’s mood was not as jovial as it had been two days before. Most people think catering is just cooking, but it’s not. The stresses of organizing, preparing, serving, dealing with people, and cleaning up either energizes or utterly exhausts you. Julian and I relished it; Boyd, the volunteer, was in culinary hell. When I asked if the crime lab folks had been able to find anything in the platters of food, he only muttered that they had not gotten to them yet.

“Which brings me to my current plan of action,” I announced. I told Julian and Boyd that whoever was putting stuff into the food had always done it as soon as my back was turned. So, what if I wasn’t the server of, say, the cottage cheese? One of them could bring out the platter and put it on the counter by the window. I’d be stationed on the deck, almost out of sight. The server would then go back to the kitchen, our saboteur would make his move, and I’d see the whole thing. “And you’ll be there to arrest ‘em,” I told Boyd triumphantly. “How convenient.”

“You gonna have a camera or something, catch this perp in a way that’ll make it possible to prosecute?” he asked skeptically.

“Maybe Ian will loan me his Polaroid.” I pulled the van through the open gate to the cabin. The damp, gold-tinged aspens clicked in the chilly breeze. Soon this road would be closed to traffic and open only to elk. I gunned the van through. Of course, that wouldn’t be true once the paint-pellet people took over the property: They shoot at each other in all kinds of weather, elk be damned. We expertly unloaded our boxes in the parking area. As we headed down the trail to the cabin, the sun emerged from behind the clouds and shone brightly on the rock I’d noticed the very first morning I’d come here to work with André: the one that looked like an elephant. Tom was probably on the phone with the department, proposing a time to bring in a crew to dig. I wondered how that was going down with Andy Fuller. I forced myself to take my mind off the treasure by contemplating pitching a catering job to the paint-pellet guys. Pellet pipéradé? Probably not.

Even though it was not quite seven, the final day’s photo session was already in full swing. Out on the cabin deck with the assembled crew, Ian Hood seemed to be in a particularly good mood, calling good-natured orders—Come on, baby. That’s it. That’s the way—to a nightgown-and-slipper-clad Rustine. She was smiling coyly and moving this way and that on a bed made up of robin’s-egg blue linens.

Even without Leah, the workers seemed to know exactly what to do as they hovered nearby. A new hairdresser and stylist I didn’t recognize moved in and out swiftly between shots, expertly fluffing Rustine’s hair with a tiny comb, checking the gold anklet that shimmered just above the heel she’d daintily exposed on the bed’s coverlet. I recognized the makeup man from earlier in the week: from time to time he darted forward to dust Rustine’s nose. On the occasional gruff order from Ian, Rufus adjusted the scrim. Hanna, black-clad as usual, like a fashionable cat burglar, scowled at everyone and tapped her foot. Behind Ian, Bobby Whitaker crossed his arms over his slight paunch and pretended to look bored. He had mentioned modeling today, but he certainly didn’t look any thinner than the last time I’d seen him.

“Damn, that model looked cold out there,” Boyd muttered as he opened the kitchen door for us. “Wouldn’t catch me out on a deck in my pj’s first thing in the morning. ’Cept if an elk was across the creek and I could get a clean shot.”

“Shh!” Julian and I warned in unison. Even though the elk-lovers were all outside working the shoot, you couldn’t be too carefull. And we had work to do. The last thing I’d done after our code-breaking session was to put thick slices of French bread into the refrigerator, to soak overnight in a decadent combination of eggs beaten with cream and Cointreau. Now these sputtered on the hot, oiled griddle. When the fragrant, drenched slices formed a deep golden crust on one side, I flipped them. I checked my watch: The coffee break was scheduled to start in twenty-five minutes. We heated the oven, ran water for coffee and tea, and poured sugar and cream into a china bowl and pitcher. I slid a platter of the French toast into the oven While Julian began unmolding the cottage cheese rings and Sergeant Boyd brought out the coffee cake, fruit skewers, and silver platters.

“Ten minutes,” I told them, and zipped out the kitchen door.

Someone had built a fire in the cabin’s old fireplace, probably for the afternoon shots. I didn’t know if this meant they wouldn’t be dropping in the flames by computer, but I’d leave that to them. The great room seemed unusually cheery, good for the break. I nipped out to the deck, where a damp breeze sent a chill down my arms. Rustine eased off the blue sheets and raised her eyebrows questioningly at me. I ignored her.

“Ian.” I caught up with him as he was conferring with Rufus about the next shot. “How’s Leah? Have you visited her?”

He thoughtfully brushed his salt-and-pepper moustache with his finger. “I went down to the hospital last night. She broke a couple ribs when she fell. She’s having some trouble breathing.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Bobby Whitaker impatiently crossing and recrossing his arms. I said, “I’m glad she’s okay.”

“Ian?” pressed Bobby. Ian gave me an indulgent, anything else? look.

I cleared my throat. “I won’t keep you. But could I borrow your Polaroid for a few minutes? Just during the coffee break.”

He tilted his head in suspicion. “Why?”

“Oh, well …” Ian couldn’t be the one sabotaging my food, could he? From all accounts, he ran a faltering photography studio, but he was the ambitious leader of a successful charity. He’d been unsympathetic to my pleas of unfair competition regarding the Soirée. Was there any way he could be in cahoots with Craig Litchfield? I gave Ian a soothing look, but his black eyes yielded nothing. Basically, I don’t trust anyone, Tom was fond of saying. “I want to take a picture of my food through the window, that’s all.” I shrugged, as if I were just a kooky caterer looking for an angle. Which, of course, I was.

“Sure. Get it from Rufus.” Ian’s words trailed over his shoulder like smoke.

Balanced halfway up a stepladder, Rufus was adjusting a scrim for the next shot. He listened to my request, frowned, then gestured to the equipment sacks on the far side of the deck. “In one of Ian’s bags. If you can find it, you can use it.”

I rummaged through collapsible stands, lenses, rolls of film, and every kind of focus before my hands finally closed around the Polaroid. I nonchalantly picked it up, frowned at it as if it were a missing piece of cooking equipment, and walked purposefully back to the kitchen. Once there, I explained to Julian and Boyd exactly how I wanted to proceed. They nodded, picked up the first fruited cottage cheese ring and hot water for the French toast chafer, and banged out the kitchen door—right into Yvonne, who shrieked and crumpled to the floor.

“Oh, gosh, we’re sorry,” Julian mumbled. Luckily, no food had spilled. Boyd, who had not yet learned that no matter who causes the problem, the caterer always apologizes, shot Yvonne an irritated glance.

She ran her fingers through her blond hair and hollered up at him, “What’re you looking at, barrel-man?”

I hustled to her side and helped her to her feet. Muttering irritably, she brushed dust off her clothes: white mohair jacket, white pants, white leather boots. “I’m really sorry,” I told her. “They should take that door off the kitchen entrance.”

She fluffed her hair. “Don’t worry about it. Do you like the outfit? Think anyone will notice the dust?”

“I love it,” I lied smoothly. “It looks perfect.”

While Boyd and Julian put the French toast and condiments on the buffet, I circled the folks on the deck to tell Hanna we were ready. She rocked on her small heels and nodded impassively. When Ian announced that the roll of film was done, Hanna efficiently signaled the break. I snagged the Polaroid from the kitchen and scutled outside.

Through the window, I could see the line forming for coffee. I strode to the far side of the last window, pretended to be looking out at the creek, and smiled at Rufus as he climbed down the ladder and headed for the food. Then I waited.

Hanna, Ian, the day-contractors, Rustine vamping Bobby: All these folks came through the line. Ian and the stylist had two pieces of French toast. Rustine had only cottage cheese. Rufus must not have eaten breakfast; he piled his plate high. Behind him stood Yvonne, who reached into the pocket of the mohair jacket, pulled out a jar, and held it close to her as she unscrewed the lid. My heart thumped; I raised the camera. Yvonne dumped the jar’s contents into the cottage cheese. I pressed the yellow button. The Polaroid flashed and spit out the picture. Yvonne looked up, glared, and hurried away from the line. But I had her.

“Arrest Yvonne.” My breathless order to Boyd took him by surprise. “I’ve got it, it’s in the picture, she endangered the food supply at a public function.”

Boyd peered at the image slowly clarifying out of the murky film. “Yup.” Laconic guy. But efficient. He had handcuffs in the pocket of his apron. When he swung the door open to the kitchen, Yvonne was scampering out the front door. Boyd rushed forward and grabbed her by a white mohaired wrist. “You have the right to remain silent,” he began tersely. Yvonne slithered up and down, her back to the front door, her eyes wide with fear. “If you don’t hold still,” Boyd warned, “I’m not going to be able to tell you the rest. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning….”

Time to tell Ian and Hanna what was going on. They were conversing intently, heads together. Rufus and the day-contractors, their mouths agape, watched Boyd cuff Yvonne and talk to her in low tones. Bobby, still appearing impatient, appeared to take no notice.

“There’s been a bit of a problem,” I began, then proceeded to tell Ian and Hanna what I had captured on film.

“That fat caterer is really a cop?” exclaimed Ian, as if I’d just informed him that his elk were all migrating to Mexico. He looked at me incredulously. “That’s why he had a mobile? I thought he got Leah’s ambulance here so quickly because you guys had to be on the lookout for food poisoning!”

When I shrugged, Hanna grabbed my apron bib. “I have to have the mohair outfit and the boots. He can take her to the penitentiary if he wants, but I need her clothes. It’s a twenty-thousand-dollar loss if I have to go over a day. Please, Goldy. Please. I’m begging you.”

The things we do for clients. I headed back to Boyd and conveyed Hanna’s request. Yvonne was crumpled against the door, whimpering. I resisted the urge to slap her face.

Boyd held up the jar. “Salt, she says. But we gotta have it analyzed anyway. She admitted some guy named Litchfield is paying her. She wants to stay and finish modeling for the day. I told her no way, and I’ve called for transport. Department has a unit in Blue Spruce, they’ll be here in about ten minutes.” When I conveyed Hanna’s plea for the garments, he shook his head. “I can’t risk losing her if she changes. She’s gotta wear those clothes. Sorry.”

Hanna’s shoulders slumped when I told her. “Get Rustine into the Go-Gear Ski outfit,” she snapped at the stylist. To me, she snarled, “Clean up the food and then go see if you can help Rustine. And lunch will have to be at two. We must complete this catalog today.” Hey, I wanted to shout, your model sabotaged my food! This is not my fault!

The harried powwow that followed centered on whether the orange ski outfit would work with Rustine’s hair, and whether or not they should move the shot inside. Two uniformed policemen appeared as Julian and I were clearing the buffet; they took the plate with the cottage cheese ring into evidence. I felt a great weight lift off my shoulders as Boyd left with Yvonne and the officers.

I scooped up the last French toast platter and started back toward the kitchen. Julian appeared and asked if I thought the clients would be wanting more coffee. I looked around. Across the cabin, Hanna and the day-workers were squabbling over photographs in the loose-leaf notebook. Rufus and Ian were arguing about the equipment. Bobby caught my eye and waved madly.

“Hey, I get it!” he cried. “That first day you were watching me undress, you weren’t interested in my bod! Were you, Goldy? You’re like, undercover, right? Is that why you were over at that old guy’s house right after he died? Snooping around? Trying to find out what happened? Cool!”

To Julian, I muttered that we didn’t need more coffee. I gripped the platter and wondered, for at least the tenth time since I’d come on this shoot, What is the deal with Bobby? No wonder Leah felt her twenty-four-year-old half-brother wouldn’t be able to survive on his own—his immaturity seemed to guarantee long-term failure.

Bobby crowed, “So, Miss Caterer Lady, didja find anything at Andre’s place?”

I stacked cups on the platter and realized I should be making some snappy comment. Or maybe I should have put down my load and held up my hands as in Who? Me? But I was embarrassed and suddenly insecure at the silence and the fact that everyone in the front room was staring openly at me. Could they guess how close Bobby had unwittingly come with his stupid questions? Could they imagine I’d ransacked a dead man’s condo until I found his salamander and crowbar?

“Would you bring me some coffee?” Rustine simpered as she floated past me toward the dressing room. “With nonfat nondairy?”

“I’d like some, too,” Hanna announced imperiously as she marched along behind Rustine. “Black. We’ll be in the hair and makeup room.”

“Sure,” I replied, glad to have a reason to scoot back to the kitchen. Luckily, Julian had made an extra pot of coffee. “I need to get out of here,” I told him. “And I’m glad you’re here, because I am sick to death of these people.”

“No kidding. It’s almost over, right? Three more hours, and we’ll be done with this place for good.” He slid a tray of miniature quiches—formerly for the Hardcastle reception—into the oven. “And, maybe it’ll rain in the next three hours, too.” He closed the oven door and waved his hands, as if conjuring up a vision. “Picture all the wedding-reception guests at the Hardcastles’ place getting soaking wet as they chomp into soggy cheese puffs. I’ll bet you a thousand bucks Craig Litchfield’s hors d’oeuvre can’t touch ours.”

I grinned, poured the fragrant coffee into a large silver pitcher, clamped the top down, and put it along with nonfat creamer, artificial sweetener, and cups on a tray. But Hanna barred me from entering the door to the hair and makeup room. Inside, Rustine and the hair fellow were shrieking at one another about how Rustine’s French twist should be held in place.

“Not yet with the coffee,” Hanna snarled. “Go get us the barrette stand, would you? Do you know what it looks like, and where it is, in the storage room?” When I nodded, she said, “Then go get it so we can deal with this crisis.”

Crisis? I hoisted the coffee tray, walked to the storage room, and kicked the door open with my foot. Was there anything having to do with a hairdo that could truly constitute a crisis! Sheesh!

I glanced around the room for barrettes. Along the back wall, by an old pole-mounted strobe and Gerald’s broken compressor, a tilted card table was piled with racks of bracelets, necklaces, and earrings. I crossed to it, banged down the coffee tray, and was so intent on pawing through the racks looking for barrettes that I barely heard the storage room door quietly click shut.

“How close were you to old André?” Ian Hood asked as he started across the room. “Did he tell you something about this cabin that you felt you had to tell the police? Is that why you brought them here?”

“I—”

But he was already too close. He grabbed for my shoulder; instinctively, I jerked backward. His dark, dark eyes bored into mine. His fingers clamped my arm. He knows, I thought. He’s the one.

“Who else knows?” he demanded.

I scarcely heard him. He had me pushed against a rack of dresses lining the wall and his fingers had closed around my neck. Black spots formed in front of my eyes.

The burns are deep, instantaneous, Andre’s voice came from some distant part of my brain. They are like molten lava….

I kicked at Ian frantically. Too late, I thought as I tried to scream. Julian was busy with the food. Boyd was gone. Everyone else was staking a claim to hair, makeup, or ego. It will be over by the time anyone misses me. Ian’s hands tightened. Visions of Arch, of Tom, flashed and vanished. I stretched my arms behind me, groping for anything. I couldn’t get my breath. We struggled and fell away from the dresses; he lost his hold on my neck. My hands clawed futilely at the wall: I couldn’t breathe. Where was the cord to the strobe light? Could I blind Ian if I plugged it in? My fingers closed around the cord. Ian lunged for me, hands outstretched. He tripped over something as I groped along the wall for the outlet. A piece of metal skittered across the floor. Ian righted himself and lurched toward me. I pushed in the plug as I wrenched away from him.

Nothing happened. No strobe, no light. Dammit! I’d plugged in Gerald’s fool compressor, now minus its loose housing that Ian had sent sailing. I charged toward the door. Ian lunged to block my way. I charged the other way and knocked into the card table.

Swiftly, Ian grabbed the strobe pole. An idea seemed to form in his mind. “This has been a most unfortunate shoot,” he said. “First André, then Leah, and now you. This very heavy light is going to fall on you, and a terrible accident will befall our second caterer.”

He advanced toward me. The light stand scraped as he yanked it along. There was nothing between us except the compressor, its engine guts exposed. Coffee, I thought wildly. All I need is coffee….

I yanked the pot from the tray and heaved the contents at Ian.

He jumped sideways so that the steaming, dark liquid missed him and sloshed onto the compressor and the floor. Ian cursed and lunged at me. I’m dead, I thought. Poor Arch won’t have a mother. Tom was right—I should never poke my nose into murder.

And then it happened. As Ian careened toward me, intent on ending my life, he stepped into the lake of coffee and the exposed, live current of Gerald Eliot’s broken air compressor. The surge of voltage caused his body to jerk up and away from me. Before he fell to the floor, he was dead.

Chapter 24

“Leah told us Ian wanted the road to the cabin kept closed,” Tom proclaimed matter-of-factly as he drove me to the museum from Lutheran Hospital on Monday, the first of September. “If he had the place to himself all winter, she said, Ian was sure he could figure out the code and find Smythe’s stolen treasure.”

It was Labor Day, except we weren’t working, even though Tom had finally been taken off suspension by his captain. With a search warrant in hand, the investigative team had toiled through the weekend at the Merciful Migrations cabin. Underneath the spare tire in the locked trunk of Ian Hood’s Mercedes, they had found The Practical Cook Book and the original note Gerald Eliot had discovered tucked in oilcloth inside the kitchen wall.

“Leah says, early last Monday morning, Ian told her he’d remembered some equipment he needed. Of course, he knew André wanted to get into the place early. He just didn’t know why. Ian must’ve surprised André prying up the wall, and told him much more food was needed. But he knew André had figured out Smythe’s code at that point. He just didn’t know what or how—only that the secret the wall had held was exposed. When André was involved with extra cooking, Ian burned him with the salamander. Maybe Ian meant to startle him, make it look as if André had an accident.” Tom turned on Homestead Drive. “But from the heart-problem incident at the museum, Ian knew André kept the nitroglycerin with him, and that he was acutely sensitive to it. So when the hot salamander had done its damage, he must have overdosed him. André died and Ian nailed the plywood back over the wall.”

“But why did Ian feel he had to kill both André and Gerald?”

“He was greedy.” Tom glanced at me. “He wanted the treasure for himself, wanted to start up someplace else saving the elk. Leah had told him he could have Charlie Smythe’s cache if Bobby could keep the proceeds from the sale of the cabin. Ian took her at her word. What Leah didn’t bank on was that her boyfriend Ian would try to eliminate anyone else who knew about the code and his secret. He didn’t want to share. Couldn’t stand competition.”

Oh, brother, I thought as guilt and insecurity reared their unattractive heads. Now who does that remind me of? Craig Litchfield hadn’t played fair, and had been in cahoots with The Jerk. And yet I had to admit I didn’t have catering in Aspen Meadow to myself anymore. So, the same insecurity that had plagued me the last month had eaten up Ian Hood, and driven him over the line to murder.

Our cellular rang as we pulled into the Homestead lot: it was Cameron Burr. He had been released and would join us at the cabin for an early dinner, thank you very much, to work with Sylvia and a crew of volunteers. And he had great news: Barbara was finally off the ventilator. The doctors were certain she was well on her road to recovery. Tom and I promised to visit her soon. And, Cameron asked, did we know Leah Smythe had vanished? We knew, we said, and hung up.

While Leah was still in the hospital, she had been questioned by Andy Fuller and two investigators from the sheriff’s department. Her face had still been bandaged; her broken ribs had made talking difficult. After they left, so did she. The hospital had called the department when they’d discovered her gone. She wasn’t a suspect in any of the crimes that had taken place at the cabin, and yet why had she slipped out? When Tom called Bobby Whitaker to ask if Leah wanted to join us at the cabin, Bobby had replied that his half-sister was too busy. Too busy, to come see historic treasure buried by her grandfather unearthed? Too busy doing what? She was at the museum, Bobby confessed, just looking at her grandfather’s old stuff.

So we were at the Homestead. We were going to talk to Leah together because I was a friend, not a cop. Besides, I wanted to know for myself what had happened with that falling flat.

But as Tom and I crossed the Homestead dining room, we immediately heard Leah arguing with Sylvia Bevans in the kitchen. Between them, on the island, were the letter from Leavenworth and the framed Times article on the 1915 stagecoach robbery. Apparently Leah was demanding that the letter and the article be deacquisitioned so she could have them for mementoes. And Sylvia, fiercely protective of the museum, as usual, was telling her that she absolutely could have neither the newspaper article nor the letter.

“But why do you want them?” huffed Sylvia, trembling indignantly inside a lime-colored linen suit. “After all this time? The police told me you want The Practical Cook Book, too. Have you gone insane? Why don’t you just take a photocopy?”

Leah, bandaged and holding herself at an awkward angle, shot back: “No, Sylvia, I have not gone insane. I’m leaving Aspen Meadow. I’m moving to Arizona, okay? The only things I want to keep are the messages my grandfather sent, and the newspaper reporting his last caper.”

“You absolutely cannot take museum property—”

“We need to talk to Miss Smythe, Mrs. Bevans,” Tom interposed gently as we joined them. “If you would excuse us. And please bear in mind all that Miss Smythe has done for the museum,” he added. “Especially this afternoon.”

Snapping her mouth shut, Sylvia stomped past Tom, back toward the sacred realms of her office. She did not acknowledge me.

Leah shuffled over to one of the stools and sat gingerly. A bare spot above her ear had been shaved and stitched. Her face was still swollen and covered with bruises, and the streaked pixie haircut looked disheveled and shorn.

“Are you here to arrest me?” she asked Tom defiantly.

“No,” Tom replied easily. “Why don’t we sit and talk?”

Leah gestured impatiently. “I’m leaving the Smythe land. When I have the property, everyone wants it. They use me to try to get it. That’s why I’m going away.”

“Begin at the beginning,” Tom advised. “Goldy hasn’t heard your story yet.”

Leah raised one eyebrow at me and hrumphed.

“I’m sorry about Ian,” I said, and meant it.

“Don’t be. Ian and I have … had been together for ten years. What kept us together was preserving wildlife migration routes.” Leah touched the bare spot on her scalp. “I guess even a good cause isn’t enough when you’re not getting along, especially when the person you thought you loved turns into a self-centered, temperamental guy.” She shifted her weight on the stool and winced. “They’re doing a lot of shooting down in Phoenix now, what with the good weather … anyway, Ian said he didn’t have the capital to set up in a new place. But I wanted to leave, and I wanted Ian to move his studio somewhere, anywhere, away from my cabin, so Bobby could sell it. I feel responsible for Bobby, and I’m the only one who does. I wanted to let him sell that land to the paint-pellet people, so he could have a way to live, now that the modeling was finished for him.” She took an unsteady breath and shook her head. “I don’t give a damn about anything buried up there. If they don’t find any of the victims’ heirs, and the county historical society people want it, they can have it. I have a big family house in Aspen Meadow that I’m about to put on the market—”

“Three people are dead,” Tom reminded her.

“Okay, okay. Sorry.” She stopped and tried to construct her thoughts. “Bobby said the place would show better if we did a little work on it. We hired Eliot because he was available and said the job could be done in a week, before we got going on the Christmas catalog. The liar.”

She fell silent; her fingers stroked her bruised cheek. Tom prompted: “And?”

She moaned. “That moron Eliot found the rifle in the wall, and a note from my grandfather saying you needed Winnie’s cookbook and the rifle to find his treasure. Ian’s Images put out the story that we’d fired Eliot, but that wasn’t quite true. Ian and Gerald Eliot were in on it together. Eliot was going to get Ian the cookbook. They were going to find the treasure together. But Ian … oh, God, I didn’t want to believe he could have killed Eliot. I didn’t even ask him about it. I didn’t want to know. And he knew better than to mention it.” She gave me a quizzical look. “How did you find out about what was in the wall?”

I said simply, “Gerald Eliot had Rustine photocopy the note. But André didn’t have the note.” Leah’s confusion deepened. I told her about André’s knowledge of the very common code, showed it to her in the Leavenworth letter, then explained that André had requested a photocopy of the cookbook. “That’s why he went to the cabin so early on Monday morning.” Leah’s eyes watered; she raked her hair again.

She said, “So … Ian managed to make it look as if André had died accidentally?” When I nodded, she began to cry. She said, “He must have thought he was in too deep, by then. Anyone who figured out the code would be on to him, about what he’d done to Eliot to get the cookbook. It all got so out of control. I knew it, but I didn’t want to face it. I was afraid.” Tears streamed down her face. “I loosened the clamp on the flat. I wanted to die. That way Bobby would still get half the property. And if the flat didn’t kill me, at least I would be far away from Ian. I knew he’d kill me next.” Sobs wracked her slender body.

“Let us take you back to your place,” Tom told her. “You need to rest.”

“Aren’t they going to start the digging up at the cabin in a couple of hours? Don’t you want to be there?”

“It’s more important for you to take care of yourself,” Tom replied. “Let us help you get home.”

She picked up the Leavenworth letter and shook her head. “I can drive. I’m fine. You all go on to the cabin. I never want to see the damn place again.” With her free hand, she smeared the tears from her eyes and forced a sour laugh. “I must look awful. I need to do something about my makeup, don’t you think?”

We followed Leah to her old house overlooking Main Street, then went home. I surveyed my lustrous cherry cabinets, bright new windows, and gleaming Carrara marble countertops. This was a kitchen I could enjoy, I decided, as Tom and I began to pack up for our meal at the cabin. Arch, joining us, announced: “Elk Park Prep called and said after Tom talked to Leland, he paid my tuition.” While I offered a quick prayer of thanks, my son looked around and exclaimed, “Man, this place rocks! The marble’s cool. I told Lettie she could come over after school tomorrow to see it. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I said with a smile. “Invite her for dinner, if she can stand the smell of paint. And you’re right, Arch, this kitchen positively rocks.”

Tom beamed wordlessly, surveying the result of his labors over the past weeks with unconcealed pride. It wasn’t quite done, but who cared? The floor still needed to be sanded and finished, the walls painted, the molding put in, and a hundred details attended to, but Tom, unlike the late Gerald Eliot, would take care of everything. My spirits soared.

“One thing I forgot to tell you,” Tom said as we were packing up chilled wine and salads. “Litchfield’s attorney tried to cop a plea on the charge of criminal mischief, tainting your food. Andy Fuller turned him down until Litchfield told Fuller that John Richard’s guy, Leland, was paying him, Litchfield, to sabotage the food. And that John Richard was calling the shots during the weekly visits that Litchfield made to the jail. That bit of info motivated Leland to pay Arch’s school bill. It looks as if Litchfield will get probation, which probably upsets him less than the facts that Edna Hardcastle’s daughter put off getting married again, and Merciful Migrations has yanked him from doing this year’s Soiree.” I blinked. Litchfield had lost two jobs in one day? Things were looking up. Tom went on: “Your ex will be charged as a principal in the criminal mischief situation. Might add to his jail time.”

“Might make him think before he tries to wreak vengeance on his ex-wives,” I observed. “So. Eventually, I’ll still be dealing with Litchfield.” I thought about that While mixing fresh basil into tomatoes vinaigrette. Was I secure enough to deal with the competition? You bet. “On an even playing field,” I said finally, firmly, “I can compete.” To Arch, I said, “Are you ready?”

My son nodded. His face had turned tight with apprehension. This was, after all, a big day for him.

On Sunday night, Rustine and Lettie had called to invite Arch to accompany them the next day, when they met their father’s flight from Juneau at Denver International Airport. Their father had given up on finding a job and was skipping the California leg of his trip to come home; he missed his daughters. Julian had generously offered to help the sisters clean their house Monday morning. I shuddered, remembering the chaos and dust we’d encountered on our visit. For his part, Arch had spent the morning getting clean himself and deciding on his wardrobe.

Julian returned; half an hour later, Rustine finally pulled up in front of our house. By that time, Arch was so nervous you’d have thought he was flying in from Alaska. I didn’t hug him good-bye. I didn’t tell him to be polite to Lettie’s father. I told him to have fun.

Julian had proposed that Marla, Hanna Klapper, and Sergeant Boyd join us at the cabin dig. To celebrate, Julian added, we should have a feast for all the workers: crab cakes, pasta, salads, Parker House Rolls from The Practical Cook Book, and Andre’s famous Grand Marnier Butter-cream Cookies, which I had given a new name. They were a delicious treat my teacher had left for me to serve my clients: Keepsake Cookies. Plus, I had made a flourless chocolate cake that was really a collapsed soufflé … when you want a soufflé to fall, it can be delicious—like life, once you’ve put it back together.

But Julian’s words haunted me as I packed the food. Celebrate what? I’d wondered. I hadn’t had the heart to ask what Julian’s plans for the future were, but I sensed the feast was a kind of good-bye. He’d declined to accompany us to church on Sunday. I concluded it was because he was on the phone, making his plans to get a ride back to Cornell so he could plead his way in for the fall semester.

“Time to go,” Tom said. “I swore to Sylvia that we’d be there by one o’clock. They aren’t allowed to bring anything out of the ground until we get there.”

Boyd and Tom carefully packed a chilled white chocolate cream sauce I’d made for the cake into the cooler; I covered the rest of the food with foil.

By the time we arrived at the Mercifull Migrations cabin, the crew of diggers made up of members of the Anthropology Department of the University of Colorado and volunteers from the Furman County Historical Society, including Cameron Burr, were hard at work at the base of the elephant rock. We set up our feast on the deck of the cabin. The diggers had vowed to have no treat until they found what they were seeking.

“Good school, the University of Colorado,” Julian said idly as I handed Marla a very small advance taste of the tomatoes vinaigrette. “I just finished a transfer application. For the spring semester, of course.”

I gasped. Marla giggled. Boyd brought his mouth into an o. Tom shook his head and said softly, “I knew it.” Even Hanna Klapper smiled.

“Something esle,” Julian went on mildly, his eyes sparkling. “I called Leah Smythe on the cellular, on my way home from Rustine’s house. Woke her up, I think.”

“You called Leah?” Hanna demanded. “Why?”

“Well,” Julian said as he tilted his handsome face knowingly at Tom and me, “you know, Leah and I are related, sort of. I’m her nephew once removed, since Brian Harrington, her brother-in-law, was my biological father. I mean, Weezie has made it very clear she doesn’t want to be involved with me. But I thought Leah might want to know she had more family than just Bobby. That she could, you know, call on me—”

“You never said I could call on you,” Marla hrumphed good-naturedly. “And I’m your biological aunt.”

“I didn’t need to,” Julian rejoined. “You knew you could call on me day and night, and you did, when I went through rush and was visiting all the fraternities, and you called every night to make sure I’d gotten back to my dorm safely.”

Labor Day Flourless Chocolate Cake with Berries, Melba Sauce and and White Chocolate Cream

7 ounces (¾sticks) unsalted butter

7 ounces best-quality bittersweet (semi-sweet) chocolate (recommended brands: Lind Bittersweet, Bernard C. Semi-Sweet, Godiva Dark)

tablespoon espresso or strong coffee

5 large eggs, separated

tablespoons best-quality unsweetened cocoa (recommended brand: Hershey’s Premium European Style)

7 tablespoons granulated sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 small package fresh blueberries (approximately 6 ounces)

1 small package fresh raspberries (approximately 6 ounces)

Melba Sauce (recipe follows)

White Chocolate Cream (recipe I follows)

Place the oven rack in the middle to lower (not the lowest) part of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 10-inch Springform pan. Make sure you have the bottom of another 10-inch Springform pan on hand.

Place the butter, chocolate, and coffee in the top of a double boiler and melt over boiling water. Transfer to a bowl and allow to cool slightly, then stir in the egg yolks and whisk until smooth. Sift the cocoa and sugar together, then sift this mixture directly into the chocolate mixture and stir until smooth. Stir in the vanilla and set aside. Beat the egg whites to soft peaks. Fold half the egg whites into the chocolate mixture, then pour the chocolate mixture on top of the remaining egg whites and fold in. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and set it on the lower rack of the oven. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the cake is puffed and the center no longer appears moist.

Remove the cake from the oven and immediately press another spring-form pan bottom onto the cake to deflate it. Allow the cake to cool on

When the cake is cool, remove the Springform ring and place the cake on a serving platter. Decorate the top with concentric rings of blueberries and raspberries. When serving, ladle large dollops of Melba Sauce and White Chocolate Cream on top of each slice.

Makes 8 to 12 servings

Melba Sauce

½ cup currant jelly

2 (6-ounce) packages fresh

raspberries, sieved (approximately

1 cup after sieving) 2 teaspoons cornstarch 7 tablespoons sugar

Heat the jelly and sieved raspberries in the top of a double boiler (placed directly on the burner) over medium heat until bubbly, about 4 or 5 minutes.

Remove from the direct heat and place on top of the bottom of the double boiler that is filled with boiling water. Mix the cornstarch with the sugar and stir into the jelly mixture. Cook and stir until thickened and clear. Remove from the heat, cool, and chill at least an hour before serving.

White Chocolate Cream

6 ounces best-quality white chocolate, coarsely chopped

1¾cups whipping cream

Over low heat, melt the chocolate with ¾ cup of the cream, stirring constantly. When the mixture is melted and smooth, remove from the heat. Pour into a bowl and, stirring occasionally, allow the mixture to come to room temperature. Whip the remaining cup of cream and, whisking constantly to ensure smoothness, stir into the chocolate mixture. Chill before serving.

Keepsake Cookies

Cookies

⅔ cup blanched, slivered almonds

2 cups (4 sticks; 1 pound) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons very finely minced orange zest

¼ cup Grand Marnier liqueur

3⅓ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

Granulated sugar, for preparing the cookies

Filling

½ cup (1 stick;¼ pound) unsalted butter, at room temperature

3 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

3 tablespoons whipping cream

1 tablespoon Grand Marnier liqueur

Grind almonds in a blender until they resemble large bread crumbs; set aside. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter until it is very smooth and creamy. Slowly add the confectioners’ sugar and beat until the mixture is very smooth. Beat in the zest and liqueur. In a small bowl, combine the flour, salt, and ground almonds. Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until very well combined. Chill the mixture for at least 3 hours, or overnight.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter two cookie sheets. Measure out the cookie dough into ½ tablespoon increments. Roll each spoonful of dough into a ball and place them, two inches apart, on the cookie sheets. Butter the bottom of a glass, then dip the glass bottom in sugar. Flatten each cookie with the buttered and sugared glass bottom to a diameter of 2¼ inches. (Do not make the cookies too thin.) Dip the glass into the sugar before flattening each cookie. Bake approximately 7 to 10 minutes, or until the cookies are just cooked through but not at all browned. After removing the cookies from the oven, allow them to cool 1 minute on the cookie sheets. Then transfer them to racks to cool completely.

For the filling, in the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter until smooth. Add the sugar, cream, and liqueur, and beat until very smooth and creamy. Spread about a teaspoon of filling on the flat underside of half the cookies; make a sandwich with the flat underside of the other half of the cookies. Store tightly covered.

Makes 64 sandwich cookies

“Marla, you never mentioned this,” I accused. “Calling like a mother hen when he was going through rush!”

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to tell, Julian,” Marla said.

“Well, just don’t give me this stuff about how you never call,” Julian zinged back. “Plus, Arch and I have decided it’s an effect Goldy has had on you. Arch told me, ‘You’ll never be able to do anything again, without Marla checking to see if you’re still alive, or telling you that whatever you’re doing is dangerous or will make you sick.’”

“Uh, excuse me,” I interjected, smiling. “If people want to eat, they need to be nice to the caterer.”

Julian patted my shoulder. “Let me finish about Leah, okay? I think at first she was relieved I wasn’t her biological nephew. She figured I wanted money, or land, or her cabin, just like Bobby and Ian. I told her I just wanted her to know that she has another relation besides Weezie and Bobby. So then she got like, all teary, and said she was just so vulnerable since Ian had died. And did I want to move in with her in the big family house in Aspen Meadow until she sold it, that she would enjoy having family around her, besides Bobby. And I could help her with her move to Phoenix, she said. There was lots and lots for me to do, to help her.”

A familiar fear gripped me. Don’t leave us, I thought, not again. Not daring to look at Julian’s happy face, I picked up the serving spoons and moved them around. You can’t hold on to people, I warned myself. You can’t keep them, any more than Charlie Smythe could protect his wretched treasure.

A whoop arose from the elephant rock.

“They found it!” Hanna cried. She had brought bird-watching binoculars, which she now swung into place. “Goodness, it’s just an old coffee can!”

We all watched Cameron Burr carefully uncap the discovery and pour it out on a piece of canvas.

Boyd cried, “Hey! How much is there?”

Sylvia Bevans, who had changed from the linen Unen suit to baggy khaki pants, sensible boots, and a wide-brimmed sun hat, bent down to ask Cameron a question. Then she turned toward us. Her face was stern. And then, for the first time in my life, I saw Sylvia smile.

“Jewelry!” she cried. “Old bills! Gold coins!”

I exhaled and smoothed the tablecloth. Well, finally, I thought. It’s over.

“So don’t you want to know what I told Leah?” Julian asked when we got home. His face was bright with mischief.

I pressed my lips together and unpacked the first box of dirty dishes and set them in the dishwasher in my brand-new beautiful kitchen. You can’t hold on to him any more than Leah could hold on to her grandfather’s land. Or Bobby could be a young and slim model forever. Or you could keep André forever. You can’t hold on to people. You can’t hold on to anything.

Tom’s large hand clasped mine. He murmured, “Stop worrying so much.”

Julian put his hand on my shoulder. “I told Leah,” he said, “that I really appreciated her offer to move in with her. But that I already had my family here.”

My eyes filled and I cursed them. The doorbell rang. “Oh, answer it, answer it!” I cried. “I can’t deal with any more in one day.”

Julian disappeared. I heard him open the front door and then argue with someone whose voice I did not recognize. Tom gave me a hug and I snuffled contentedly into the familiar warmth of his shoulder. We really are a family, I thought. An absolutely terrific family.

Julian reappeared in the doorway. His face was ashen.

“It’s the county health inspector. Should I let him in?”

About the Author

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her her husband and three sons. She is the author of eleven bestselling culinary mysteries, including Dying for Chocolate, The Main Corpse, The Grilling Season, and Chopping Spree.

This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.

NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED

Prime Cut

A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Bantam hardcover edition / 1998

Bantam mass market edition / March 2000

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 1998 by Diane Mott Davidson

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information address: Bantam Books.

eISBN: 978-0-307-42882-0

Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, New York, New York.

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