Cooking Up Trouble (17 page)

Paavo frowned. “That’s suspicious in itself.”

For the first time, Moira smiled. “I agree.”

“And you,” Paavo said. “Knowing all this was going on, how did you cope? Why did you stay here?”

Her face drained of what little color it had. “Sometimes we don’t have choices, Inspector.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head.

“Did he do something to you? Hurt you?”

“No one cares about that.”

“I suspect more care than you imagine.”

She reached out as if to touch his hand, but one glance at him and her hand stilled, then rested on the table near his. “Thank you. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anyone say anything like that to me.”

“Oh!” Angie stood in the doorway, her gaze jumping from one to the other. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean to interrupt…I was just…lunch…”

Paavo stood. “We were talking about Finley.”

Angie’s eyes were wide. “Yes. Of course.” She turned and ran down the hall.

“Pardon me,” Paavo said to Moira, hurrying after Angie.

She was already at the stairs when he reached the hallway. “Wait a minute!”

She didn’t.

He took the stairs two at a time, grabbing her elbow as she reached their room; but she pulled herself free.

Just before she could shut the door, he put his foot in the doorway. “Angelina, will you listen?” He pushed the door open and entered.

“I’d like to be alone,” she announced. He could feel how hurt she was.

“Is that so?” He pushed the door shut and circled around her.

“Please, Paavo, just go.” She held her ground. “You don’t seem to have much to say to me, anyway. Not nearly as much as you have to say to Miss Tay.”

“And just what have I said to Miss Tay that has caused this outburst?”

She turned her back to him; her voice was low. “I’m sure that’s between the two of you.”

He stepped in front of her. “We were talking about her and her brother.”

One eyebrow rose and she folded her arms. “Oh? And that caused you two to hold hands?”

“No need for sarcasm, Angie. Besides, we weren’t holding hands. Hers was next to mine.”

Angie’s look was long, low, and seething. “Same difference.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You weren’t exactly pulling away.”

He took hold of her arms. “You walked in on the middle of something, made assumptions about it, and now you’re getting upset for no reason.”

“Who’s upset?” She pushed him away.

“You are.” He stepped closer.

She put her hands against his chest, stopping him. “I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at her ever since we arrived. What is it with you? I know you have some kind of special feelings for her, but I don’t know what and I don’t know why. Do you deny it?”

“Special
what
?” He just stared at her. How could she suggest such a thing?

“Don’t tell me you knew her in a past life. I don’t
believe in reincarnation, either, despite what everyone else here says!”

“You don’t get it, do you, Angie?” Here he’d been acting like a lovesick schoolboy around her, leaving his job, home, everything familiar, to be with her. Now he just wanted to get to the bottom of what was going on around here, but all she saw was him talking to another woman.

“This isn’t about me, Paavo. There’s more here than you’re telling me. I know you. I can feel it.”

“Intuition, Angie? Next time—if there is one—trust me.” With that, he left.

Angie lined up mushrooms
, celery, cucumber, spinach, leeks, and onions on the kitchen counter. This inn menu was supposed to be vegetarian. Fine. That’s what she’d cook. Nothing else she cooked was appreciated. She wasn’t appreciated. Not by anyone.

But she wasn’t about to cook another Finley concoction. That was too much a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face—or in this case, eating soybeans to spite your stomach. Instead, she’d cook the vegetables à la Grecque, simmering them in a court bouillon of water, olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, thyme, fennel, and peppercorns, letting the bouillon boil down, then pouring it over the vegetables. She’d then serve them cold as part of a buffet with some risotto and onion soup.

She started slicing the onions. As she sliced and diced the vegetables, her thoughts strayed to the people here. Paavo the onion head. Moira the mushroom. Bethel was like a celery stalk; Chelsea most definitely a cucumber; Reginald, spinach; and Martin, leeks. But Running
Spirit? What was he? A fat yellow squash came to mind for some reason.

Darn, she didn’t have any.

She didn’t have much of anything, in fact. Her supply of food was dwindling fast. If they didn’t get off this damned hill soon, she’d be reduced to cooking the way the peasants did in
The Good Earth
, where they counted how many grains of rice each person was given to eat.

She continued to slice the onions, her eyes watering more with each stroke of the knife. She let the tears flow. No one here even considered the fact that it was hard work to cook for all these people. Granted, the dishes she came up with were fairly easy, but the quantity was enormous, and that alone made cooking time-consuming. Did anyone care? No. She’d tried to make light of this mess, but she couldn’t any longer. Everything she’d tried, or planned, had gone inside out and backwards.

All she wanted to do was show Paavo that they could be together day in and day out in harmony and happiness. So what happens? She brings him to a hill with a bunch of homicidal lunatics. He’s off investigating, and for all she knows, he could be next on someone’s hit list. Or she could be. And on top of that, they weren’t getting along well, either.

She had to be the most unlucky person who ever lived.

Having finished with the onions, she wiped her eyes and took a deep, cleansing sigh. Chopping onions always made her feel so much better.

She picked up the mushrooms and began slicing them into thin pieces. Moira the mushroom. What was this fascination Moira held for so many men at this inn? Moira seemed spooky, as far as Angie was concerned. She’d never understand men. Particularly homicide inspectors.

“It’s nice that you’re here, Angelina,” Bethel said, her hands flicking the sides of her caftan so they poofed out around her as she walked into the kitchen. She peered into the pot as Angie stirred the bouillon.

Nice for whom? she wanted to ask. “Thanks.”

“I mean it, dear girl. Whatever would we do if you weren’t here?” Bethel stole a stalk of celery from the counter. “Why, even I might have to cook.”

So it wasn’t her company Bethel enjoyed, it was having a live-in cook. Heck, if she were Julia Child, Bethel would probably be doing cartwheels.

“Is that soup?” Bethel asked, pointing with her celery. “It seemed a trifle thin, don’t you think?”

“It’s called
Soupe du Jardin Mort
.” Even dead garden soup sounded classy in French.

“Of course,” Bethel chuckled. “I should have recognized it. One of my favorites.
C’est magnifique!
”

“Right,” Angie replied.

“And if I might be so bold…” Bethel began.

Was there no getting rid of her?

“Bringing a homicide inspector here with you was a simply marvelous idea. I feel much safer knowing he’s here. He doesn’t have a gun, though, does he?”

“A gun?”

“I’m opposed to guns.”

“Don’t worry. He’d only use it to stop a criminal from killing an innocent person, such as yourself,” Angie said.

“Oh, well, in that situation, guns are all right.”

Angie wondered if Bethel’s turban had been worn too tight for too many years.

“Have you seen the inspector lately?” Bethel asked.

Angie tried to push aside the memory of Paavo and Moira holding hands, or nearly holding them, but it wasn’t easy. “I saw him a while ago.”

“I wonder if he’s got any idea who killed Finley and the others.”

Angie looked at her closely. “I don’t know.”

“It scares me to think it might be someone from the town.” Bethel finished her celery. “But it scares me even more to think it’s someone in this house. I think about it day and night.”

“We all do,” Angie said. “Do you think it might be someone here with us?”

“Impossible. Unless it’s that Running Spirit, of course.” Bethel watched as Angie placed the vegetables, tender after having been simmered, onto serving dishes. “I never trusted him from the minute he declared his new name. He’s just a charlatan, you know.”

Angie’s gaze drifted over Bethel’s lime-green caftan and matching turban. “Oh, really?”

“It’s terrible. Once people would come to see me, and they’d simply believe me. Those were good, honest times. But these days, there are so many who’ve been ripped off that they want me to prove what I’m doing and saying. Now, I ask you, how can anyone prove that a four-hundred-year-old Inuit is channeling?”

“I have no idea.” Angie stirred the bouillon.

“Me, neither. Then, for some reason I don’t understand at all, many of the people who know about spirituality are also into computers. Do you understand that?”

“No.”

“They seem to think I can relate spiritual space to cyber-space, spiritual reality to virtual reality. I don’t even understand the concept of virtual reality. It sounds like a contradiction in terms. But they say that spiritual reality sounds the same way. They seem to think that if Allakaket isn’t up on this cyber-punk stuff he isn’t real. I don’t know what to do. I don’t understand any of it anymore.”

“I guess you could try to learn what your audience is interested in.”

“I asked Reginald to teach me, since he knows so much about electronics. He said I’d hate it, and he won’t even try.”

“That’s terrible. Can Martin help any?”

“He’s worse than I am about such things.”

“Why don’t you just ask Allakaket? Since he knows about twentieth-century things, even though he’s from the sixteenth century, it seems he should understand virtual reality as well.” The bouillon had boiled down sufficiently to form a tasty sauce. Angie spooned it over the vegetables.

“Now you sound like my ever-dwindling audience. No one understands properly. That was why Martin and I were so happy when Finley approached us about being part owners of this inn.”

Finley approached the Baymans? Had he approached others as well? This was a surprise. “What do you mean?” Angie asked.

“He was going to let me run an institute here. I would explain to the public what I was doing and offer classes and a quiet place for contemplation and retreat. Martin liked to call it a Disneyland for New Age types, but he was wrong. It was going to be a college—like one of Oxford’s, for example. And I’d be dean. We thought we couldn’t afford to get in on this opportunity, but then Martin found a way to arrange it. He’s so clever and brilliant.”

Angie couldn’t imagine being so desperate as to have to rely on Finley Tay. “I had no idea. How terrible it must have been for you and Martin.”

“Ah, Angie, to be young again. To have dreams for the future. Now I have none, except to hope that somehow I
can come away from this with the business I’d hoped for. If that fails, I have no idea what I’ll do.”

Angie carried the dishes of vegetables to the refrigerator. “I’m sure something will come up for you or Martin.”

“Not Martin.” Bethel snatched a cucumber slice and popped it into her mouth. “Mmm. Delicious. Martin’s totally dependent on me. Actually, there’s one person I’ve been talking to who had an idea.”

“Who was that?”

Bethel loudly licked the sauce off her fingers. “Chelsea. She said she had the inside track with someone and suggested I try to channel with him. He’s modern, with a built-in audience that would bring me lots of publicity, and therefore money, immediately.”

“My goodness, who could that be?”

“Elvis.”

“It’s impossible to find anything in that storm. It’s kicked up again.” Reginald Vane opened the front door but stayed on the stoop as he shook some of the water off and scraped the mud off his shoes; then he walked into the house. Paavo did the same and came in behind him.

Angie and Chelsea sat in the drawing room listening to Bethel talk about the first time she’d channeled Allakaket and how frightening it had been. Bethel stopped talking and all faced the door as soon as they heard Reginald’s voice.

Paavo’s gaze caught Angie’s, but she turned away.

“Is Running Spirit still searching?” she asked Reginald.

“He was right behind us,” Reginald replied, “but he said he wanted to go over to the cliffs first.”

Martin was next to enter the house, but he headed toward the library, where the liquor was kept.

Reginald greeted Chelsea. “Are you all right, Miss Worthington? I heard you had some trouble last night.”

“Trouble?” Bethel chimed in. “What trouble?”

“It was nothing,” Chelsea answered quickly. “I’m quite fine, Mr. Vane. Thank you. My only concern now is for Patsy and Mr. Jeffers.”

“I wouldn’t waste my sympathy on him,” Bethel said, “if you know what I mean.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“If anything, he’s the one who should be missing in action, not poor Patsy. Who did she ever hurt?”

“I hadn’t thought about it that way, but you’re certainly right,” Chelsea agreed. “Do you agree, Mr. Vane?”

“Absolutely,” Reginald said, looking at her in a way that made Angie sure he’d agree if she said that Running Spirit was San Francisco’s uncaptured Zodiac killer. “He made her terribly unhappy, I believe.”

“He should pay,” Bethel said.

Suddenly a massive blast, followed by a second, then a third in quick succession, rocked the house, rattled the windows, and caused the investors to put their hands to their ears, ready to duck.

Moira ran into the drawing room. “What was that? Is everyone all right?”

They waited a moment, wondering if another blast would hit. Paavo headed for the French doors. “It came from out there.”

The rain was falling hard, but despite that, they could see a huge cloud of black smoke. On the ground, a few fires burned, then quickly fizzled out. Still, they had to get close before they could clearly see that where a small toolshed once stood, there was now nothing but a few smoldering boards and a smoking pit blown into the earth. Angie reached Paavo with effort. Her shoes stuck
in the mud, and her clothing and hair were quickly drenched. Paavo put his arm out. “Don’t come closer.”

“What happened?” Angie asked.

He pointed. Not far in front of him lay one of Running Spirit’s tooled-leather boots, and just beyond, near some shattered boards, she saw the other one. But no Running Spirit.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, staring, unable to turn her head. She felt woozy. Paavo put his arm around her, letting her bury her face against his chest. Her body shook from the horror before her, her stomach recoiled, and she wasn’t sure her lunch would stay down.

“Well, well,” Martin Bayman said, suddenly at her side, shielding from the rain a glass of what appeared to be straight whiskey. “It looks like our friend just had the ultimate out-of-body experience.”