Crunch Time (2 page)

I finished the kneading, tucked the dough into a buttered bowl, and placed it over a pan of hot water in one of our turned-off ovens. I washed my hands, dried them, and leaned against the marble counter Tom had installed when he’d had to take over the remodeling of our kitchen from an incompetent contractor. I loved my new kitchen. Never mind that Tom had cursed to heaven when he’d put in the cabinets, and never mind that over the past few years, the catering business had encountered a few bumps. We’d gotten through it all, and I was determined that this would continue to be true.

I felt my face set in a scowl. Yolanda’s sobs seemed to get louder. Was she worried about the national economy? I wanted to tell her that I was
positive
things would pick up soon. They always did, as I’d been reminding myself for the past three weeks. If a caterer ended up shorthanded and missed the wave of bookings that would occur once things turned around, that caterer wouldn’t be doing all those profitable parties during the hectic Halloween-to-Christmas season. When everyone started whooping it up again, I did
not
want to be without help.

That was one of the reasons I’d offered Yolanda the job. Julian Teller, my longtime assistant, had returned to the vegetarian bistro in Boulder that employed him. The bistro owner always took August off, but once students returned to the University of Colorado, the owner demanded Julian’s time. With him gone, I would need another professional at my side.
Eventually
I would need that professional. I didn’t allow myself to wonder
if
or
when
clients would resume their celebratory ways, at least not during the day. Night, though, when I anxiously stared at the dark ceiling, was a different matter.

I took another glance out the window over the deep double stainless sink, also installed by Tom. Now the thermometer had dipped to forty-five. I sighed. Soon the doors to our local grocery stores would be flanked with spills of pumpkins. People would be calling, wanting to sign up
Goldilocks’ Catering
for their holiday bashes. . . .

In the bathroom, Yolanda was blowing her nose. Whether there was a resurgence in bookings or not, I was beginning to have doubts about hiring her. Julian, at twenty-three, was even-keeled and mature. Yolanda, twelve years older than Julian, and whom I thought I knew well, was falling apart her first day on the job.

Could this be about the people that Yolanda hung out with, the people to whom Tom had referred? Who were these people, and why wouldn’t Tom tell me more about them? I had no idea, but I resolved to interrogate my husband at the earliest opportunity.

Eventually Yolanda returned to the kitchen, her eyes puffy and her cheeks cinnamon red. She was wearing black capri pants under a plain white chef’s jacket, and as usual, she looked like a model, not a cook. She seemed oblivious to how gorgeous she was. She hadn’t cared about anyone in any deep sense until she’d met Kris. But hadn’t she told me at the spa that she’d just broken up with Kris?

Ah.

The wailing, the pork
slamming, and the dash to the bathroom might be because of the breakup with Kris Nielsen.
Actually, as soon as this possibility occurred to me, I was sure of it. Tom would say I was jumping to a conclusion without evidence. Even though it was Sunday, Tom had been called into work. So without him there to inject logic, I could be as irrational as I wanted.

“Is this because of Kris?” I asked, still calm, as Yolanda picked up the first roast and placed it on a rack.

“That bastard!” Yolanda shrieked, and I jumped. When she whacked the pan back on the counter, the pork sprang off its moorings and bounced twice on the counter before heading for the floor. Yolanda quickly bent sideways with her arms outstretched. She snagged the meat a nanosecond before it landed, like an outfielder diving for a fly ball. Who says Cubans don’t have God-given baseball skills?

Turning her back to me, Yolanda rinsed off the meat and returned it to the rack. Without elaborating on the bastard status of Kris Nielsen, she cleaned the counter, then washed her hands and placed the other roasts on the pan. Then she washed her hands again—caterers and chefs have the cleanest, driest hands imaginable—and preheated the oven I wasn’t using for the bread. Quickly, as if to avoid my eyes, she strode back to the walk-in and opened the door.

“Breaking up really is awful,” I called sympathetically in the direction of the cool interior. Yolanda did not reply. Was she thinking of making another dish for the kids the next day? We didn’t have extra ingredients. In fact, the only things I could think of that were new in the walk-in were racks of lamb chops that I was preparing for a church fund-raising dinner, and a ham, which Tom had bought because he wanted it for our family. We were already serving the CBHS kids pork and chicken, so we didn’t need more meat.

I returned to my own chore. With the bread rising, I needed to get going on the Caprese salad. At the sink designated for produce, I rinsed fresh organic tomatoes, which we would marinate in a basil-oil vinaigrette and serve the following day with chopped fresh basil and
ciliegine
—small, smooth, fresh mozzarella the size of cotton balls. I pondered Yolanda’s situation as I moved my first pile of the succulent crimson fruit to one side. All right, breaking up is awful. But not always. I actually thought Yolanda had
happily
dumped Kris, and not vice versa. If he had ditched her, then I could understand the tears.

So maybe it was something else.

When I heard Yolanda emerging from the walk-in, I began slicing the tomatoes. I said comfortingly, and I hoped not too nosily, “You’re right, he’s a bastard.” But she said nothing. When I looked over, she was opening the preheated oven. Her forehead wrinkled as she concentrated on sliding the roasting pan holding the pork inside.

I went back to work. I was aware of who Kris Nielsen was. Tall, muscular, and prematurely white-haired, he was a fixture around town. My best friend, Marla Korman, who was also the other ex-wife of our deceased ex-husband, unaffectionately known as the Jerk, had provided me with Kris’s background. Marla thrived on gossip; the juicier the news, the faster she drank it in. She said Kris Nielsen was in his midthirties, had become stratospherically rich when he sold his Silicon Valley computer start-up, and had moved to Aspen Meadow, where he’d bought a “huge” house. If Marla, who was no slouch in the Wealth Department, said Kris’s place was big, it was probably the size of an aircraft carrier. I hadn’t been inside the house, because Kris had never hired me to cater for him. And he’d had no reason to. Until recently, he’d had a girlfriend who was one of the all-time great chefs. I set a second hillock of tomato slices aside and turned. Yolanda had gone back into the walk-in.

I said, “So . . . Kris is out of your life now, right?”

“I wish he was, that son of a bitch.” Again Yolanda’s tone was fierce. When she slammed the door to the walk-in, a thump made me think the ham had catapulted off its shelf. Yolanda, unheeding, strode to the produce sink with bunches of basil in each hand. “I wish Kris was
dead.
”

I set my knife aside and entered the walk-in. The ham, still mercifully in its wrappings, lay on the floor. I set it back where it belonged, reentered the kitchen, and silently made us each an iced latte.
I wish Kris was dead?
This was more than idle kitchen banter.

“Time for a break,” I announced as I placed the lattes on our kitchen table. I pulled out the sugar bowl and placed it carefully beside Yolanda’s glass. The one time Yolanda’s aunt Ferdinanda had made me a Cuban coffee, she’d put so much sugar into it that I’d gagged. Yolanda always spooned four sugars into her own caffeinated drink. The first time I’d seen her do this, I’d closed my eyes.

“So,” I began after a sip, “why are you so upset all of a sudden?”

“The wind scared me,” she said sullenly, “and I’m tired of being scared.” She ladled sugar into her coffee. Not for the first time, I wondered how Yolanda could stay so thin while indulging in so much sweet stuff.

“Well,” I said, “Kris is out of your life now, isn’t he? I mean, is he . . . doing something to frighten you? Or, I don’t know, are you trying to get some of your belongings from his house, and he won’t let you in? Something like that?”

“Ha!” Her eyes blazed. Once again, I recoiled. “Having me in the same place with him is what he
wants,
Goldy. I told him he could take his house and shove it up his ass.”

“All right, then. No house.”

Yolanda did not smile. When I’d asked Marla for details about Kris’s place, she’d told me he’d purchased a ten-thousand-square-foot stucco, red-roofed mansion on five acres, smack at the highest point of the ritzy local development known as Flicker Ridge. So not only was Yolanda talking about an anatomical impossibility, it was an anatomically impossible feat of gargantuan proportions.

I tried again. “So you don’t want to get into his house. But he’s doing something to upset you, and you want him dead. Why?”

Yolanda lifted her chin defiantly and brushed a mass of curls off her forehead. She was wearing large gold hoop earrings. When she opened her mouth to speak, her citrus scent wafted toward me. She stopped, inhaled, then started talking. “We broke up. Do you remember? I told you about it.” When I nodded, she went on. “We were living together.” She actually blushed, bless her heart. She was Roman Catholic, and I wondered if she’d confessed this sexual tidbit to a priest. If she had, and if she’d continued to live with Kris, could the priest absolve her? Hmm. Then Yolanda spoke so fiercely that I jumped. “Aunt Ferdinanda was with us. No matter where I live, I have to take care of her! And that takes a lot of time and money. You know that.”

“I do,” I said, remembering how faithful Yolanda had been that summer at pushing Ferdinanda’s wheelchair everywhere. Ferdinanda, a steely-haired veteran—or so she claimed—of Castro’s army, had become disillusioned with communism and, in the sixties, come over on a boat to Miami. Earlier this summer, Ferdinanda had been shopping in Denver when she’d been struck by a hit-and-run driver. With her leg broken in four places, she’d been forced to learn how to use a wheelchair during the long healing process. While Yolanda had been rolling Ferdinanda around, the older woman had protested that she was strong, could take care of herself, and just wanted to be left alone. I said, “So, what’s the problem? Or what
was
the problem?”

Yolanda shook her head. “Whenever Kris and I weren’t physically together, with me in the same room beside him, he was on my case. When I was working at the spa? You know we didn’t get good cell phone reception out there. So Kris would call the switchboard, when the food staff and I were in the kitchen, prepping, cooking, serving, or washing the dishes. ‘What are you doing?’ he’d want to know, once I’d walked over to the office and answered the phone. ‘When will you be back?’ he’d say. Then, the very next day, he’d phone the spa real early, when we were making breakfast. So back I’d go to the office. ‘How’s it going?’ he’d say. ‘When will you be home?’ It didn’t matter what I said, how busy I told him we were. He’d phone all through the day. He always wanted to know where I was going, who I’d be with, when I’d be back. I never asked
him
where
he
was going or what he was doing. That was strictly a no-no.”

I sighed as old memories intruded. I knew the story; it was familiar, as in like-the-Jerk familiar. He would always want to know what I was up to, every minute of the day. But if I asked him why he was home so late? I’d get punched in the face.

I resolutely put these thoughts out of my head and reminded myself for the millionth time that the Jerk was dead, thank God. Hmm, that wasn’t a very nice thought. Maybe I was the one who needed to go to confession, although in general, Episcopalians aren’t big on confession. Sinning, yes. Spilling our guts in hopes of absolution? Forget it.

Yolanda took a sip of coffee, added more sugar, and pushed her curly hair away from her face. She never wore a hairnet, as required by the county. She insisted that in all her years of food service, no one had complained. I hoped she was right.

She went on. “When Kris would ask me all these questions? I’d tell him, ‘I’m in the car, taking Ferdinanda to the doctor,’ or ‘I’m on my way to the grocery store,’ or ‘I’m working, Kris, what do you think I’m doing?’ And he’d always tell me I should quit, so that he could take care of me. But I never would. I don’t care how much money he had or what he promised.”

I sipped my coffee and nodded sympathetically. When I’d worked briefly at the spa, the staff had told me how, before Yolanda and Kris broke up, someone from the office always had to summon Yolanda to the switchboard. Yolanda would want to know who was calling, and when they told her, she’d just shake her head. When I’d heard this, I’d thought Kris was calling because he
cared
about Yolanda, or at the very least because he was worried about her. That lasted until Marla enlightened me. She’d found out from one of her sources that Kris was seeing other women while Yolanda was at work.

Seeing other women
could explain why Kris had always insisted on knowing where Yolanda was, what she was doing, and when she’d be back. But I kept that thought to myself, because I didn’t want to hurt Yolanda.

“So, you broke up,” I said, adding a bit of cream to my coffee. “What, is he taking it hard?”

“Hard? Is he taking it
hard
?” Yolanda gave me a look that said,
You must be pretty naïve.
“Yeah. You could say that. He’s taking it hard.” She glanced out our back windows, at the clouds gathering over the mountains. “At first, right after we broke up, he called our rental house and hung up, called and hung up, called and hung up. His number was blocked, but I knew it was him. Then, maybe twelve times a night, he drove that damned Maserati of his past our place. You remember our little A-frame in Aspen Hills?” When I nodded, she went on. “Luckily, I was able to get back into it after Kris and I broke up, when Ferdinanda and I moved out of his house. But then, with him calling and driving by, I was really creeped out!”