Fatally Flaky (5 page)

Julian stopped to lean on the shovel. “And, boss, what are you going to do about Billie Attenborough changing the venue for her wedding? She’ll have to pay a cancellation fee for renting your space, too, right?”

“Absolutely. Charlotte knows that.”

“Looks like you don’t want to discuss it at the moment,” Julian said with a kind grin.

“You’re right.” I really did not want to think about Billie Attenborough and her latest crisis. I could envision my entire evening—when I had wanted just to go home and cook for Tom—going down the proverbial tubes as I called the florist and all the other vendors. Of course, if Tom was involved in an investigation of Doc Finn’s death, the evening was already shot. My heart squeezed again. Poor Doc Finn.

After a moment, I said to Julian, “Gold Gulch Spa is located at the old Creek Ranch Hotel.”

“Yeah, the one with the hot spring. Way out Upper Cottonwood Creek. Near the Spruce Medical Group’s building, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, “but Spruce Medical has relocated to town, and their old building is up for lease.”

Julian shook his head. “This town is changing too fast.”

“You know, with Gold Gulch Spa as the venue for Billie’s wedding, we’re going to have to deal with Victor Lane.”

“That guy’s an asshole,” Julian remarked. “I wish somebody would dump him into a ravine.”

“Now, now, Julian. Stiff upper lip.”

“He thinks he knows about food and he doesn’t know jack.”

“He’s going to know Jack, because Jack’s coming to the wedding.”

“Oh, super. Your godfather, the smoker who’s had two heart attacks, coming face-to-face with the guy who thinks he knows all there is to know about healthful eating. I did a party where he was a guest. He tried to tell me what I should have served. I’m like, Welcome to the Vegetarian Revolution, Victor! You wanna cook, go ahead. But someone else is paying me to do it, so back off.”

“I know the guy’s a creep, but give him a break.”

“No.”

Great. I had to say, though, Julian was right. And in fact, I had as much, if not more, reason to dislike Victor Lane and his vaunted Gold Gulch Spa than Julian did. But I kept mum. After all, a job was just a job, right?

As Julian had said, No.

A
s I headed home, tatters of dark cloud hung in front of a lighter sky. Gray drizzle continued to fall. Once I’d unpacked the boxes, I fixed myself what I called my Summertime Special: two to four shots of espresso—depending on how badly I needed the caffeine—with whipping cream and ice cubes, and sat at our oak kitchen table to collect myself. With some trepidation, I checked our blinking answering machine.

There was no message from Billie Attenborough—she probably figured she’d done enough damage for one day—nor was there one from Southwest Hospital, the place to which the ambulance had hauled away Norman O’Neal. Tom’s deep, reassuring voice sounded strained when he said he hoped to be home by seven; the medical examiner was making a special trip in to night.

That didn’t sound good.

Arch was up next, announcing gleefully that he’d been invited to spend another night at Gus’s place, and was that okay? Todd was there with them, too, and Todd’s mother had already said he could stay.

Charlotte Attenborough’s voice greeted me next. She said she wanted to talk to me about the new arrangements for the reception, which Billie was supposed to tell me about, but had forgotten. I rolled my eyes. The daughter blamed the mother, and vice versa. Personally, I accepted Charlotte’s version. I shook my head. If Arch had ever been as flaky as Billie Attenborough, he never would have made it through elementary school.

Did I, Charlotte went on, know where my godfather, Jack, was? There was no answer at his house. Could she come to my place this evening to talk?

“I sure don’t want to see you,” I said aloud to the empty kitchen. “But I suppose we’re going to have to go over some things.”

Adding fifty people and changing the venue of the reception? Letting me know a mere forty-eight hours in advance? I poured myself a small glass of sherry.

Finally, there was Marla. She and my godfather were getting comprehensively inebriated, and could they please come over? Not to worry, Marla had already called a Denver car service to do the chauffering.

“Call me as soon as you get this message, will you?” Marla demanded. “I’ll have to tell the car service what time.” She stopped to give Jack directions to her garage, where he’d find more scotch. “I know you live less than a mile from me, Goldy. But you can’t be too careful with cops waiting around every corner, just dying to hand everyone DUI citations. I don’t mean Tom, of course. Yeah, sure, bring the bourbon, too!” she shrieked at Jack. “Now listen”—here she lowered her voice—“I’ve got the churchwomen coming to night for a fund-raising discussion. Remember that dessert you promised to make for me? I still need it. And I won’t be able to stay at your place long, okay? So you need to take care of your godfather once I get there. What, Jack?” she called. “You can find more ice in the refrigerator in the garage—”

She hung up.

So. At this point, I was left to worry about how much booze two former heart attack patients—Marla and Jack—were downing, whether I could come up with realistic contract changes for Charlotte Attenborough, and making a dessert that I’d completely forgotten about. I wondered how the Episcopal churchwomen would feel about vanilla ice cream in a graham cracker crust. Probably not very good.

But I always had backup plans, so our walk-in or freezer should yield something.

I called Marla and told her to contact the car service. She replied that they’d be along as soon as humanly possible. How was Jack doing? I asked.

“About what you’d expect,” was her cryptic reply. He must have been sitting right there.

Next I phoned Arch and said it was fine for him to stay with Gus. He thanked me profusely and promised they’d be over the next night. I told him not to worry about it.

I called Charlotte Attenborough, got her voice mail, and said sure, she could come over this evening, as long as it was before ten.

I opened the walk-in and looked around for dessert ingredients for Marla. My eyes lit on a coeur à la crème that I’d drained overnight, with the intention of serving it to Tom to celebrate our love, it being wedding season and all. I could fix Tom another one, and the churchwomen would be more likely to open up their checkbooks if they were actually served something that Marla said was “incomparably rich.”

It was just past five. Marla was due to come over with Jack, but what with a car service having to make it up the mountain, that was probably at least an hour away. I drank my sherry, and thought about Doc Finn.

He had been a wonderful man, absolutely dedicated to healing. When Arch had been running a high fever during one of our periodic blizzards, his pediatrician’s office had not been answering their phone. Nor had Arch’s father, the Jerk, chosen to come home. He’d said he was staying in Denver—although I knew he was with his girlfriend. In desperation, I’d called Spruce Medical, and Doc Finn had jumped into his Jeep and driven out to us that night. I’d told him I didn’t know doctors still made house calls. Doc Finn had tried to touch my swollen cheek—another gift from the Jerk—and I’d shied away from him. I’d said Arch was in bed, and didn’t he want to see him?

Doc Finn had been kind and gentle with Arch. He’d taken my son’s temperature, listened to his chest, and checked his ears. Doc Finn’s verdict: Arch had pneumonia. But Doc Finn had brought a bag of meds, including antibiotics, and we had weathered the storm, literally and figuratively.

As Doc Finn was leaving that night, he turned to me thoughtfully and said, “Doctors are supposed to heal, not hurt.” I’d burst out crying, and taken the card Doc Finn had proffered. It hadn’t been his card; it had belonged to a divorce lawyer.

I finished the sherry and traipsed upstairs, where I peeled off my catering clothes and decided on a shower. Doc Finn had been such a wonderful man, so thorough in his diagnoses, so good with patients young and old—the town would miss him terribly. As would Jack Carmichael. My heart was wrenched, thinking of my godfather and his dear friend. What would Jack do without Doc Finn?

While the hot water soothed my body, I tried to put the image of Doc Finn at the bottom of a ravine out of my mind. But when I did, the vision of today’s wedding crashers—Norman O’Neal, plus Billie Attenborough with her fiancé, Craig Miller, in tow—came up. Better to dispense with them, too.

Instead, I pondered Marla’s pie. I had pecans in the walk-in, and could make a nut-and-butter crust. This I would pack with the chilled coeur filling. On top I’d put concentric circles of blueberries and raspberries, and I’d give Marla a bowl of whipped cream to place on the side. All this would go over well with the churchwomen, I had no doubt.

With the least of my problems solved, I dried off and donned jeans and a sweatshirt. It was still cool and drizzly outside, so a hot dinner for Tom and me, and Jack if I could convince him to stay, would work well. I always wanted Jack to feel welcome to eat with us, but he seldom did. Said he’d been a bachelor for so long, he resisted mothering.

I opened the freezer side of the walk-in and surveyed the contents. In February, I’d made and frozen a pork ragout. With penne pasta and a Romaine salad with vinaigrette, it would be perfect.

Once I’d mixed up Marla’s butter crust with toasted pecans, I patted the crumbly mixture into a pie pan, then put it into the oven to bake. I set the table for three and thawed the ragout. It looked luscious. Finally, I located the penne, washed and dried the Romaine leaves, and whisked together a Dijon vinaigrette.

I pulled the hot pie plate out of the oven, set it aside to cool, and booted up my kitchen computer. Reluctantly, I pulled up Billie Attenborough’s menu. I had my basic moneymaking formulas for different recipes. They all allowed for some overage, because you had to, but not for an extra fifty people. I was a true believer in love and all that, but if you were a caterer, weddings were the last place you should be feeling charitable.

I stared at the menu. On such short notice, how in the hell was I supposed to come up with fifty extra guests’ worth of crab cakes with sauce gribiche, labor-intensive deviled eggs with caviar, artichoke skewers, and the two salads? Plus, would the wedding cake Julian was making even be big enough? And what about having enough servers? Well, Billie had said Victor Lane’s staff would be willing to help, and doggone it, help they were going to have to.

I printed out a list of extra foodstuffs we would need, plus the recipes that would go with those ingredients. I knew the chef at Gold Gulch Spa. Yolanda was actually an old friend who had trained with my mentor, André. She had a prickly exterior, but once you got to know her, Yolanda was a generous soul. Still, I knew she would not be happy to add more duties to all she had to do in the spa kitchen. I shook my head. What ailed Billie Attenborough anyway?

The phone rang and I checked the caller ID. It was Julian.

“Are you all right?” I immediately demanded.

“Of course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be? A drunk crashed into the cake I’d spent zillions of hours making for his daughter’s wedding, and why? Because apparently the priest flattened him. And then while I was trying to fix the cake, the bitch whose wedding we’re doing the day after tomorrow showed up in the kitchen with a whole new set of demands, which include adding fifty people to her guest list. What about that strikes you as not all right?”

“Oh, Julian, I’m sorry. I just was worried about you.”

“And I’m worried about you, boss. I was just sitting here thinking of all that extra work Billie’s dumped on you, and wondering how you’re going to manage casing a new venue while buying more supplies while doing a kick-ass new amount of new cooking. So…are you staring at your computer now, or what?”

I sighed. “You’ve got it.”

“All right, e-mail me your shopping list and recipes, and I’ll get it done tomorrow. Plus, I know, I’ll have to make an extra layer or two for the wedding cake. I always leave the assembly to the last thing, so that’ll work. And I’ve already asked for the day off from the bistro.”

“But Saturday is your busy day there! And you can’t possibly do all this in one day!”

“Don’t worry, okay? You’ve got enough on your plate. Speaking of which, boss, have you eaten anything?”

“I’m heating up dinner now. Jack’s with Marla, and she’s going to bring him over. Tom will be home late, and Arch is with Gus and Todd.”

“Okay.” He sounded relieved. “Now tell me you’re not sweating seeing that prick of a spa owner Victor Lane too much.”

“I’m not sweating it,” I lied.

“You don’t sound convinced.” When I said nothing, he said, “All right, just e-mail that stuff over, and I’ll get cracking. I know a fancy-food store here that carries caviar by the case, and they have organic free-range eggs, too. I can get some fresh new potatoes, dill, artichokes, and haricots verts at the farmers’ market first thing in the morning.”

“Okay, listen, I’ve got plenty of pasteurized crab to do an extra hundred crab cakes, plus sauce. That should be way more than enough. You’re welcome to do all the rest. Please know I’m grateful. I’m so glad we don’t have to dump all the extra work on Yolanda out at the spa.”

“Wouldn’t she just love that?”

“No, she wouldn’t. And by the way, you’re the best.”

“Oh, and don’t I know it,” he said. But he didn’t. Julian was the most humble twenty-something I’d ever met. “Now be sure to get plenty of rest to night. Any word from the Attenborough coven?”

“Charlotte called. She’s going to have to come over to night so we can do the extra contract. But my big worry is Jack. I have to try to comfort him. I mean, he’s just lost his best friend. I’m going to try to convince him to eat here.”

“Yeah, good plan. Did they ever find out exactly what happened to Doc Finn?”

“Car accident is all I know. Tom should be able to tell me more later.”

He signed off after again urging me not to worry about the Attenborough wedding. “Just think,” he said, trying to sound jovial, “in just forty-eight hours, it’ll be over!” When I didn’t say anything, Julian concluded, “And don’t worry about Victor Lane either.”

Right, I thought as I checked the pecan-butter crust. It was cool enough to fill, so I set about picking over and carefully washing the raspberries and blueberries Julian had brought from the same Boulder farmers’ market where he’d be going tomorrow.

Don’t worry about Victor Lane, Julian had said. But how could I not worry about the obstreperous owner of Gold Gulch Spa? Victor Lane had stabbed me in the back once. Figuratively speaking, of course. Still, what was to prevent him from doing it again?

I spooned the luscious coeur filling into the cooled crust, and carefully dried enough berries to make the top of Marla’s pie both gorgeous and appetizing. Then I told myself,
Don’t think about Billie Attenborough, don’t think about Doc Finn, don’t think about Victor Lane.
Yeah, especially that.

But as I dropped the berries into precise place, I reflected, trying not to, on Victor Lane. When I’d finished my Denver apprenticeship to André Hibbard, I applied to work at the only catering business serving the mountain area, an enterprise with the ridiculously unappetizing name Victor’s Vittles, owned and operated by Victor Lane. As far as I knew, Victor had gotten into the food business because he’d seen the need the wealthy of Aspen Meadow had for giving parties. He’d seen an easy way to make money, and he’d taken it.

I thought back to those difficult years right after I’d divorced the Jerk. I’d gotten the house, in the parlance of divorced people, and I wanted to be able to do food service when Arch was in school or with babysitters, without subjecting him to the grueling routine of restaurant work. I thought I’d have a perfect fit with Victor’s Vittles.

Boy, was I wrong.

Victor did not like to work with food—far from it. His idea of catering a summer party was to go down to one of the ware house clubs in Denver, buy corn chips and cheese dip, several tubs of prepared potato salad, a variety of packages of hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, and/or chicken legs, all of which he slathered with bottled barbecue sauce and threw onto the grill while he tossed packaged salads with ranch dressing made from a mix. For dessert, he ordered either the ware house chocolate cake, carrot cake, or cheesecake.