McCall

by Patricia Evans Jordan

  Mary smiled. “It’s ketchup. Did you not eat meatloaf as a kid?”

  “We had a cook when I was growing up, and this was definitely not in the dinner rotation.”

  They each took a bite, savoring in silence. Sara was the first to speak.

  “Wow. This is really complex, the rosemary is wonderful with the meat, and the texture is perfect, which I didn’t expect,” she said, putting another bite into her mouth. “I love it.”

  “Do you know Karen Harvey that runs the hardware store?”

  “Yep,” said Sara, “I went to her for the pine siding I put in the cabin bathroom.”

  “Well, she sent that one, and she’ll be excited it made the cut.”

  Mary took a stack of recipe cards out of her jacket pocket and dug through them until she found Karen’s meatloaf, then handed it to Sara.

  “It definitely makes it,” Sara said, setting it aside to start the pile of keepers. “What’s next?”

  They went through every dish, including something called chess pie that Sara ate two pieces of before she went on to the next dish. Her favorite was a macaroni and cheese recipe from one of the police officer’s wives; it was baked in a deep dish with gruyere, cheddar, and fontina cheeses, with a crispy topping of toasted breadcrumbs browned with bacon. Mary’s cinnamon rolls, of course went into the winners pile. Roasted short ribs with a homemade steak sauce was also a winner, and the owner of Moxie Java contributed a cherry pie with crust so flaky it nearly brought tears to her eyes. In the end, everything contributed by the locals made the cut.

  “Well, that’s the local favorites section done,” Sara said, “And I think I have the rest of it nailed down as well; it’s mostly comfort food like lasagna, and southern fried chicken with biscuits. We’ll have to see how it goes with the kitchen staff; I’m starting their training on the recipes this afternoon.”

  “It’s all pretty straight forward, with the exception of that chess pie,” Mary said. “Unless the rest of the menu is really complicated, I’d guess they’ll pick it up pretty quick.”

  ****

  The afternoon flew by as Sara started training the kitchen staff. They turned out to be quick learners, and if everything continued to go well, Sara found herself thinking that she may not have to be in the kitchen much at all. At around seven, Sara sent them home and cleaned the kitchen, carefully putting away the rest of the local dishes to go back to later when she was breaking down the recipes in more detail for the staff. Just as she turned to leave, her phone pinged. It was Sam.

  There were four accidents on the water today and I’m still dealing with the fallout. Any chance of dinner tomorrow instead?

  It’s a deal, Sara typed back. I’m exhausted and just now leaving the diner.

  Sara gathered the rest of her things and headed out to her truck, excited to be going home until she remembered she didn’t have her truck; Sam had dropped her off that morning.

  “Great,” Sara muttered as she locked the doors to the diner.

  The streets were almost deserted and it was almost dark. It wasn’t a long walk home, only a mile, but it suddenly felt like fifteen. She wondered if she could get Jen to give her a ride until she remembered Jen didn’t have a car yet, and there was no way she was going to ask Sam to drop everything and drive her home, so she threw her bag over her shoulder and started towards the cabin. Her phone pinged before she was even past Moxie Java and Sara dug for it, finding it all the way in the bottom of her bag.

  Meet me at the docks, gorgeous?

  This is Sara, she texted back. Did you mean to send this to Murphy?

  It was only about a second before Sam’s reply lit up her screen.

  Very funny.

  When she came down the hill, she saw Sam’s patrol boat pulled up to the outside edge of the farthest dock. Sam jumped out and met her at the bottom of the hill, taking her bag off her shoulder and handing Sara her jacket.

  “I thought we said tomorrow?” Sara said, slipping into Sam’s patrol jacket.

  “I’m just here to drive you home and kiss you goodnight.”

  “Wait,” Sara said as they walked down the dock to the boat. “Isn’t this my jacket?”

  Sam raised an eyebrow and loosened the ropes tied to the dock rings. “If it is then you’ve been having my name embroidered on your clothes, which is classic stalker behavior, don’t you think?”

  Sara laughed. “No, this is the one you gave me the first time we met, then I said I was keeping it the next day when you were a jerk about the boat license.”

  “Yep, you left it on the chair when you stormed out.”

  “Well,” Sara said, snuggling into it and setting into the passenger’s seat, “Thanks for returning it.”

  Sam leaned down to kiss her, lingering a moment to breathe in the scent of her skin. She’d never noticed the scent of someone’s skin before, but Sara always smelled like warmth and fresh air.

  She stood and started the engine, reversing slowly out and away from the dock, then accelerating towards the center of the lake. Summer was slowly starting to fade into fall, and the evenings were already colder. It was September first tomorrow, and all the campers and staff had been leaving McCall in stages over the last couple of weeks. Town was already quieter; lake patrol always slowed down in the fall and they’d have a few weeks to rest before the skiers took over the town in late October.

  Sara watched the water rush past the boat in white waves. The houses on the north shore came into view, the lights in the windows like squares of gold set into the darkness. The sound of a boat engine had become soothing, familiar, like she’d lived here all her life. As they rounded the corner of the shoreline, Sara’s cabin came into view, with a new floodlight that illuminated her dock and parking slip.

  “Sam,” she said, tugging at her sleeve and pointing to the dock. “Where did that come from? I’ve never had a light on my dock.”

  Sam smiled, slowing gradually as she approached. “You’ve always had one. The switch is on your back deck. It just didn’t have a bulb in it. I stopped by and replaced it this afternoon.”

  Sam pulled up to the side of the dock and cut the engine. She hopped up on the dock and wound the rope loosely to the dock ring, holding her hand out for Sara. They walked to the back of the cabin and Sara unlocked the door, reaching inside to switch on the lights.

  “Thank you,” she said. “You’d better be careful; a girl could get used to this kind of chivalry.”

  Sam pulled her into her arms and kissed her, holding her face gently with her hands. “Get used to it,” she said, kissing her one last time and walking back to her boat.

  ****

  The next morning was Saturday, and Sara woke to find Jen asleep on the couch below the loft.

  “Hey, Jen,” she said, coming down the stairs in a tank top and pajama pants. “Is this your way of telling me you want pancakes?”

  Sunlight streamed through the windows and Jen stretched her arms toward the ceiling. “It was too late to bike back into town from the trails so I just stopped here. What time is it?”

  “It’s almost noon, sleepyhead.”

  “And it’s Saturday?”

  Sara nodded as she started the coffee and pulled her hair into a bun. Jennifer leaned over the back of the couch.

  “Hey,” she said, “Guess who has an interview at the high school on Monday?”

  Sara ran and jumped over the back of the couch and squarely onto her sister. “No way! To teach?”

  “No,” Jen said, with a completely straight face. “To landscape the grounds with bonsai trees.”

  Sara hit her with a couch pillow.

  “Of course to teach,” Jen said, “Advanced mathematics, as well as helping with the AP track students.”

  “Jen that’s amazing!”

  “Amazing enough for pancakes?”

  Sara smiled. “And I have blueberries in the fridge from the farmer’s market last Thursday.”

  A truck rumbled down the driveway just then and
came to a hurried stop. Jen looked out the window and called back to Sara. “Lake Patrol, Sam’s here.”

  She’d just flopped back down on the couch when another Lake Patrol truck pulled up and parked, then Sara heard both doors slam. She looked at Jen, who was sitting up by now, and they both jumped at the loud knock at her door.

  “What the hell?” Sara mouthed to Jen.

  Jen shook her head and started for the door, but Sara pulled her back. She looked out the window before she opened the door.

  “It’s just Sam and Murphy,” she whispered, “But what are they doing here?”

  Jen shrugged as Sara opened the door.

  Murphy burst past her and pulled Jennifer into his arms. Sara looked at Sam after realizing she wouldn’t be getting an answer from Jen, who was now kissing Murphy as if they hadn’t seen each other for months.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Sam said. “I just got a radio call from Murphy to meet him here ASAP, so I did.”

  They looked over at Jen again, her forehead pressed against his.

  “Okay,” Sam said, “Not that this isn’t sweet, but I’m still not sure why we’re here?”

  Murphy answered, his arm still around Jennifer. “I got a call to get down to the Wilson dock.”

  “Wait,” Sara said, looking at Jen, “Isn’t that where you’re renting a slip to dock your houseboat?”

  Jen nodded as Murphy went on.

  “And when I got there, Mrs. Wilson said she’d been hearing banging in Jen’s houseboat all night. When she went down to check on her, the door was locked, so she called us. I was the first one to answer so I went down to the boat and looked in the window. The place looked trashed; it looked like everything had been thrown around, even the canisters on the counters were tipped over onto the floor.”

  “Oh my God! Who was in there?” Jen looked suddenly pale.

  “So I called for backup and tried to call Jen a thousand times, but it was just going to voicemail.”

  Jen reached for her phone and looked at the black screen. “It must have died after I got here; I usually plug it in but I didn’t have my charger.”

  “How long ago was this?” Sam said, pulling out her phone. “Did backup get there before you left?”

  “Yeah, then I radioed you from the truck on the way over. I don’t know what’s happened since then.”

  Sam put the phone to her ear and walked outside, pulling her holster and firearm out of the truck and strapping them on as she talked.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What the hell?” Sara said. “Who would want to rob a houseboat? I never even lock the cabin.”

  All three of them lined up at the cabin windows facing the truck and watched Sam as she paced back and forth in front of her truck. Just when Jennifer lost patience and started for the door, Sam finally clicked her phone off and walked back to the house.

  “Well,” she said as she came in, “There’s good news and bad news.”

  “Spill it, Draper.” Jen was in no mood for stalling.

  “The short story is that someone did get into your boat and trash the inside, but the officers said that there was no major damage. Although I think you’ll be spending some time cleaning your kitchen in the near future.”

  “What?” Sara asked. “What would they want so badly in the kitchen?”

  “Do you leave your windows open?”

  “The nights have been so cool that I open one in the main room and one in the bedroom,” Jen said. “Why?”

  “Well, it looks like a little crew of raccoons decided to come in and make themselves a midnight snack.”

  Murphy looked at Sam, both of them suddenly trying not to laugh.

  “That explains the almighty mess,” Murphy said. “I just saw everything tipped over and thought something must have happened to Jen.”

  “I would have thought the same thing,” Sam said. “If that was Sara’s place, I’d be blazing down this road going ninety too.”

  “They won’t hurt the raccoons, will they?” Jen’s hands were on her hips. “It’s my fault they were in there in the first place.”

  “They’ve already got them trapped and are headed back into the woods to release them,” Sam said. “They’ll be pissed off, but totally safe.”

  Sara headed back into the kitchen and started getting out the eggs and flour for the pancakes.

  “I know Sam’s not working,” she said, looking back at them over her shoulder, “But are you on duty, Murphy?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “I was off at noon; I was just on my way home when I got the call.”

  “Perfect,” Sara said, cracking eggs into a bowl, “Then both of you can stay for breakfast.”

  Murphy looked like he’d just won the lottery, then headed outside with Sam to put the guns away.

  “Oh my God,” Jen whispered as the door closed behind them. “Look at me! I can’t believe he saw me with my hair all wild and no makeup.” Jen pointed at the messy waves that had already escaped from her bun. “Something tells me he couldn’t care less, but this isn’t exactly my best look either.”

  They both thought to look down at the same moment. The sheer tank tops they were wearing didn’t hide much, and they both burst into laughter at the same time.

  “And we might as well be naked. Fabulous,” Jennifer said, heading for the loft. “Can I borrow an actual shirt?”

  “Only if you bring me one.” Sara poured milk into the mix and whipped it with a whisk, turning on the heat under the pans on the stove.

  ****

  Sara had the pancakes done in record time, and they took their plates out to the back deck to eat in the sunshine. A late summer breeze was coming off the lake and swept through the tops of the trees, and a group of three canoes in the distance shouted back and forth across the water.

  “Seriously the best pancakes I’ve ever had,” Murphy said, pouring syrup onto a second stack and cutting into them. “I had no idea we even had a chef in McCall until that pancake breakfast you did for the Island Scramble.”

  “What’s the Island Scramble?” Jen said, spearing another pancake and dragging it to her plate.

  “It’s a huge fundraising event for the high school here and the Lake Patrol hires caterers to do a pancake breakfast for it every year,” Murphy said. “There’s news coverage from Boise and everything.” He dipped some pancake in syrup and put it in his mouth, closing his eyes in bliss.

  “And an hour and a half before the breakfast was supposed to start,” Sam continued for him, “The catering company said they somehow double booked themselves and weren’t coming at all.”

  “So you had all those people expecting breakfast and no one to cook?”

  “Until your sister saved the day,” Murphy said, nodding at Sara and choosing another sausage from the serving plate. “Best pancakes I ever ate. Everybody was talking about how beautiful it was, too. It looked like a picture in a magazine.”

  Jen smiled over at Sara. “That doesn’t surprise me at all.”

  “They’re sweet, but they’re actually making it sound way better than it was,” Sara said, taking the orange juice pitcher back in to refill.

  “No, we’re not,” Sam said to Sara, shaking her head. “She saved my ass. There’s no other way to put it.”

  “That girl could run a country if she wanted to,” Jennifer said, looking over at her through the kitchen window. “She’s always been crazy talented.”

  Sara stuck her head back through the door from the kitchen. “I’m going to make some mimosas. Anybody up for it?”

  “God, yes,” Jen said, leaning back in her chair and looking out to the lake. “That’s what has always pissed me off about my parents,” Jen said quietly. “She’s smarter than me and my brother put together, but they made her feel like there was something wrong with her until the day she left home because of the dyslexia.”

  “What?” Sam said, running her fingers through her hair and st
aring at Jennifer. “I didn’t know she’s dyslexic.”

  “Shit, sorry.” Jen covered her mouth with her hand. “I thought she’d told you.”

  “No worries. I won’t tell her it came from you,” Sam said. “But is that why she said she almost failed out of high school?”

  “I’ll tell her I told you; she’s used to my mouth,” Jen said. “And yes, in middle school her teachers had her tested and told my parents, but they just pretended it didn’t exist. They went on and on about how she just wasn’t applying herself. I think they just didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “How could I have been with her all this time and not known?”

  “She covers it really well,” Jen said. “Like in a restaurant, she’ll point at the menu or she’ll pick out one thing…”

  Like the monte cristo. Sam thought.

  “…Then ask a question about it to figure out what it is, then that’s what she orders. Anyway, that’s why she went to culinary school, which mortified my parents; my brother and I both went to traditional colleges.”

  Sara came back through the door just then, carrying a pitcher in one hand and four champagne flutes in the other.

  “What?” She said, looking around in the awkward silence. “Jennifer, what did you say?”

  “Why do you always assume it’s me?” Jen took the glasses from her and gave everyone one. “I may have mentioned the dyslexia thing.”

  “Jen!” Sara sighed and started pouring the mimosas into the glasses. She glanced at Sam, who got up to take over pouring. “Actually, I should have brought it up by now, so whatever.” Sam set the pitcher back on the table and pulled Sara in to kiss her cheek.

  “Hey, Murphy,” Sara said, taking her glass and sitting down, “Did you know that Jennifer still sucks her thumb in her sleep?’

  Jennifer just put her head down on the table with a little moan.

  Later, after Sam and Murphy did the dishes, Sam left to do errands, promising to return for dinner.

  “I’m taking you out, though,” she said, kissing her gently at the door. “You cooked breakfast.”