The Grilling Season (34 page)

D
IANE
M
OTT
D
AVIDSON
lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her husband and three sons and is at work on her next Goldy novel.

If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s
The Grilling Season
you won’t want to miss
her tantalizing mystery,
Prime Cut.

Look for
Prime Cut
from
Bantam Books at your favorite bookstore.

And, in the meantime, turn the page
for an exciting preview!

Prime Cut

by Diane Mott Davidson

L
ike a fudge souffle, life can collapse. You think you have it all together—fine melted chocolate, clouds of egg white, hints of sugar and vanilla—and then
bam.
There’s a reason things fall apart, my husband would say. But of course Tom would say that. He’s a cop.

On the home front, things were not good. My kitchen was trashed, my catering business faced nasty competition, and my fourteen-year-old son Arch desperately missed our former boarder, twenty-year-old Julian Teller. Tom was embroiled in a feud with a new assistant district attorney who would plea bargain Charlie Manson down to disturbing the peace. I felt increasingly frantic—for work, for cooking space, for perspective.

Given these problems, life brightened somewhat when my old cooking teacher, Chef André Hibbard, offered me a one-day gig helping to cater a fashion shoot. My clients—the ones I still had—would have scoffed.

Perhaps they’d have been right to ridicule me, I reflected as I pulled my van into the dirt lot at the edge of Sandbottom Creek. Across the water stood the Merciful Migrations cabin, where the first week of the photo shoot would take place. My clients would have asked: What’s a caterer who revels in butter, chocolate, cream, and cheese doing cooking for
fashion models?
Good question.

It felt as if the cloudless, stonewashed-denim sky overhead and remote-but-picturesque cabin echoed:
Very good question.
I ignored a shudder of self-doubt, jumped out of my van, and inhaled mountain air crisp with the high-country’s mid-August hint of fall. It was only ten
A.M.
Usually I didn’t arrive two hours before a lunch, especially when the dishes had already been prepared. But show me a
designated historic site
and I’ll show you a
dysfunctional cooking area.
Plus, I was worried about my old friend Andre. This was his first off-site catered meal since he’d retired four years ago, and he was a basket case.

I opened the van’s side door and heaved up the box containing the Savory Florentine Cheesecakes I’d made for the buffet. I expertly slammed the door with my foot, crossed the rushing water, and carefully climbed the stone steps to the cabin. On the deck, I took another deep breath, rebalanced my load, and pushed through the massive wooden door.

Workers bustled about a brightly lit log-lined, high-beamed great room. They called to each other to move the
scrim
, a mounted swatch of fabric diffusing the photographer’s light, or screw in the
flats
, movable eight-foot-square sections that framed the set. Other folks rushed to and fro laden with hairdryers, notebooks, makeup trays, tripods, and camera
equipment. Clutching my box, I tried to figure out where Andre might be.

The models were easy to spot. Muscular young men and impossibly slender women, all with arrestingly beautiful faces, leaned against the log walls or sat in the few stripped-bark bentwood chairs. The models’ expressions seemed frozen in first-day-of-school apprehension. And no wonder: They were about to undergo the cattle call for the famed Prince & Grogan Christmas catalog. Auditioning to model Santa-print pajamas for department store ads
had
to be anxiety-creating. I hate even having my picture taken.

I plowed a crooked path to what I hoped was the kitchen entrance. As I feared, the cramped cooking space featured plywood nailed along the wall over the sink, buckled linoleum counters, and a gas oven that dated from Hitler’s invasion of France. In the center of the uneven wood floor, short, paunchy, sixty-five-year-old André Hibbard surveyed the room with open dissatisfaction. As usual, he sported a pristine white chefs jacket that hugged his pot belly. His black pants were knife-creased; his black shoes were shiny and spotless. When he saw me, he drew his rosebud mouth into a frown.

“Thank
goodness.
” His plum-colored cheeks shook; the silvery curls lining his neck trembled. “Are these people
pigs
, that I have to work in this
trough?”

I set down my box, gave him a quick hug, and sniffed a trace of his spicy cologne. “Andre! You’re never happy. But I’m here, and I brought the non-meat entree you requested. Main-dish cheesecakes made with Gruyère and spinach.”
breadbasket. The floor’s scarred planks reverberated as someone stamped and hollered that the stylist was supposed to bring out the gold chains
right now!
I swallowed and stared at the disarray on the tray.

To make room on the counter, I skidded the cheesecakes down the marble. The enticing scents of tangy melted Gruyère, spinach delicately seasoned with scallions, and hot cream cheese melded with Parmesan all spiraled upward. The thick torte’s golden-brown topping looked gorgeous, fit for the centerfold of
Gourmet.

Best to avoid thoughts of
gorgeous
, I reminded myself as I placed a crystal bowl of endive and radicchio on the marble. Truth to tell, for this booking I’d been a bit apprehensive in the appearance department. Foodie magazines these days eagerly screamed a new trend:
Today’s caterer should offer
pretty
servers in addition to
beautiful
food! Submit headshots along with menus!

I pushed the butter balls onto the counter, keenly aware of my unfashionably curly blond hair and plump thirty-three-year-old-body beneath a white shirt, loose black skirt, and white apron. I hadn’t submitted a photo.

Of course, neither had Andre, who was now fuming at a kitchen intruder. I sighed and moved the plate of juicy honeydew melon and luscious fat raspberries onto the counter, then parted the cloth folds of the breadbasket. The tower of butter-flecked rolls, moist cornbread biscuits, and sourdough-thyme baguettes had not toppled, thank goodness. I tried not to add
Will the fashion folks eat this?
to my growing list of worries.
had done the bulk of the preparation at his condo. While he gave me the background on the shoot, we used disposable thermometers to do the obligatory off-site food-service tests for temperature. Was the heated food hot enough? The chilled offerings cold enough? Yes. Finally, we checked the colorful arrangements of fruit and bowls of salad, and tucked the rolls into napkin-lined baskets.

When the cheesecakes emerged, golden-brown and puffed, they filled the old kitchen with a heavenly aroma. Andre asked me to take them out to the buffet to settle. I quickly stocked the first tray, heaved it onto my shoulder, and nudged through the kitchen door. When I entered the great room, a loudly barked command made me jump.

“Take off your shirt!”

I banged the tray onto the ruby-veined marble shelf that a note in Andre’s familiar sloping hand had labeled
Buffet.
The shelf, cantilevered out of the massive log walls, creaked ominously. The top of the cheesecake slid perilously sideways.

“Your shirt!”

I grabbed the first springform pan to keep it from tipping. This was not what I was expecting. Because the noise outside the kitchen had abated, I’d thought the room was empty and that the models’ auditions had been moved elsewhere. But my more immediate worry was the cheesecakes, now threatening to toboggan downward. If they landed on the floor, I’d be assigned to cook a new main dish. This would not be fun.

With great care, I slid the steaming concoctions onto the counter. Arguing voices erupted from the far corner of the great room. I grabbed the leaning.

He
tsked
while I flipped on the ancient oven’s illegible thermostat. “Whose recipe?”

“Julian Teller’s. Now training to become a vegetarian chef.” I lifted the cakes from the box and slid them into the oven to reheat. “Now, put me to work,” I demanded.

I helped Andre pour out the tangy sauces that would accompany the delicate spring rolls he’d stuffed with fat steamed shrimp, sprigs of cilantro, and lemon grass. Then we stirred chopped pears into the red-wine vinaigrette, counted Parker House rolls and baguettes, and discussed the layout of the buffet. Prince & Grogan, an upscale Denver department store, was the client of record. But the fashion photography studio, Hooded Images, was running the show.

“Zack Hood does fashion photography for money,” Andre announced as he checked his menu, “and nature photography for fun. You know this?”

From Andre’s scratched, overloaded red equipment box—one I knew well from our days at his restaurant—I nabbed the old-fashioned scoop he used to make butter balls. “I know his pictures of elk. You can’t live in Aspen Meadow and miss them.”

Andre pursed his lips and handed me the tub of chilled butter. “The helpers are day-contractors working for Prince & Grogan.”

The word
contractor
, unfortunately, instantly brought my trashed kitchen to mind.
Forget it for now—you have work to do.
I scraped the butter into dense, creamy balls. I wrapped the breads in foil while Andre counted his platters. Because the cabin kitchen was not a commercially-approved space, he
“And while you’re at it, take off your
pants!
” the same female voice bellowed.

“For sportswear?” a young man squealed in dismay.

I turned and peered past the bentwood chairs and sleigh-bed frames the workers had piled higgledy-piggledy in the dusty, sun-steeped space. By the far bank of windows, a solitary, extraordinarily beautiful young man stood in front of a trio of judges. The judges—two women and a man, all of whom I knew—perched on a slatted bench. None of them looked happy.

Nearest was Hanna Klapper—dark-haired, wide-faced, fortyish, never-married. Hanna was familiar to me from my former stint as a volunteer at Aspen Meadow’s Homestead Museum. With her authoritarian voice and exacting ways, Hanna had designed exhibits installed by trembling docents, yours truly included. She had demanded that we put on surgical gloves before moving woven baskets or antique Indian pots even two inches. If we forgot, or, God forbid, dropped an item, she’d kick us out faster than you could say
Buffalo Bill’s blood-stained holster.
According to Andre, Hanna had recently been appointed as the new artistic director at Prince & Grogan. I was amazed to see that she had shed her gingham-smock-and-sensible-shoes wardrobe for an elegant black silk shirt, tie, and pants. Her mahogany-colored hair, formerly pulled into a severe French twist, was now shaped into a fashionably angled pageboy. This wasn’t just a new job, it was a metamorphosis.

Hanna opened and closed her fists as she chided the male model. The gorgeous fellow argued
back. I wondered how Hanna’s exhibits on
Cattle-Rustling meets Cowboy Cooking
and
Gunslingers: Their Gripes and Their Girls
had prepared her for ruthlessly ordering models to strip. In any event, I certainly wouldn’t want her judging
my
body.

The woman seated next to her on the bench was a bit younger. Leah Smythe, small-boned and delicately-featured, wore her blond-streaked black hair in a shaggy pixie cut. She had jumped up and was now holding out her hands in a pleading gesture to the model. Andre had confided to me that Leah was the big cheese, the woman with the power: the casting director for Hooded Images. Leah also owned the cabin. When Hooded Images was not engaged in a shoot, Leah allowed Merciful Migrations to use the space for elk-tracking, fund-raising, and salt-lick distribution.

The beautiful young man who wouldn’t take off his shirt looked as if he could use a lick of salt, especially on the side of a glass of tequila. My heart went out to him.

The man sitting next to Hanna and Leah, photographer Zack Hood, had a handsome, fine-boned face, wavy salt-and-pepper hair, and a trim beard. Zack’s photos of trotting elk, grazing elk, big-buck elk, and mom-and-baby elk graced the libraries, grocery stores, post offices, banks, and schools of Aspen Meadow and Blue Spruce. My best friend, Marla Korman—other ex-wife of my ex-husband—had sent Zack a dozen elk burgers when he’d criticized her fundraising abilities. He hadn’t spoken to her since.

“Do you want this job or not?” Hanna
brusquely asked the model. Seeming to take no notice, Zack squinted through the lens of a camera.

No
, as a matter of fact, my inner voice replied. I
don’t want this job.
No matter how much I tried to deny it, my heart was as blue as the gas flame on Andre’s old restaurant stovetop.
Quit fretting
, I ordered myself as I counted out glasses and lined them up.

I sneaked another peek at the male model still being appraised by Zack, Hanna, and Leah. He was twentyish, fresh from the Greek-god category of guys. His dark curly hair, olive complexion, and perfectly-shaped aquiline features complemented wide shoulders above an expansive chest, trim waist, and long legs. But his handsome face was pinched in frustration. Worse, his tall, elegant body—clothed in fashionably loose beige clothing—didn’t seem too steady on its feet. Hands on hips, Hanna looked intensely annoyed. Leah sadly shook her head. Zack gestured angrily and squawked something along the lines of
You have to be able to compete. If you can’t compete, get out of the business.

“I hate competing,” I muttered under my breath.

Apollo-in-khaki put his hands behind his head and frowned at the windows. He snarled, “We’re having a few problems, so what? I’m the best man for this job, and you know it.”

I smiled in spite of myself. A
few
problems?

“Didn’t your agent tell you about the cruise section?” snapped Leah. Zack Hood popped a flash, then stared quizzically at the camera, a Polaroid. He lifted the apparatus and thwacked it savagely against the bench, startling his companions.

“Spit out the picture!” Zack yelled at the camera, then lofted it back to his eye. Another flash sparked; no photograph emerged.

From the cabin’s far door, footsteps and the clank of tools announced one of the workers who’d set up the scrim. Tall and gangly, this fellow traipsed into the room hauling a load of bulging canvas bags. He writhed to get loose of his load, dropped the sacks, then pensively rubbed a beard so uneven and scruffy it looked pasted on his ultra-pale skin. After a moment, he picked up a framed picture and centered it on the wall. I broke out into a sweat and turned back to the buffet.