Prime Cut

by Diane Mott Davidson

  He took his cigar out of his mouth to sip his coffee. “I’ve got competitors in Phoenix and Miami and New York who are breathing down my neck. I’ve got real estate development all through the mountain area threatening wildlife migration that I’ve tried to protect for over a decade.” He squinted at me. “And you’re dangling bad press in front of me? Am I going to be sorry I let you come here today? Your food isn’t that good, if you want to know the truth. The chicken has too much red pepper and the rice tastes like dirt.”

  I stared at his barely touched plate. “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the meal,” I said softly, while thinking, If you’d lay off the stinky cigars, your taste buds would work. “I’m not going to the newspaper. But catering is my livelihood, even if today’s meal isn’t to your liking. Listen, Craig Litchfield is doing free parties for two of the three women judging the tasting party, in exchange for their vote.”

  “And you’re sure of this.”

  “He offered to do a free party for Leah, until she told him she wasn’t voting.” I steeled myself. “Weezie Harrington and Edna Hardcastle both canceled me out of catering their parties after Litchfield said he could do them at no charge, I firmly believe.”

  “But it’s not as if you weren’t trying to bribe them. It’s just that the damn price was different. Right?”

  I took a deep breath. What did Leah see in this person? What had it been like for André to work for him? “I wasn’t—”

  Ian stubbed out his cigar and again glanced along the deck. “Listen, I’d do anything to try to save the elk in this state.”

  “I realize that—”

  He stood up. “Don’t drag me into your stupid squabble over who caters the damn fund-raiser. The other guy won the booking. Live with it.” He grinned. “Suck it up, caterer.” And with that he strode off the deck.

  Wow, was that fun, I thought sourly.

  Julian and Boyd had cleared the plates and were working inside. I picked up the mostly empty platters. A mass of red pepper flakes speckling the coq au vin sauce gave me pause. A closer inspection showed the flakes were not in the sauce, but on top of the last chicken breast; they had been dumped on. For heaven’s sake, Ian had been right. The only condiments we’d placed on the tables had been salt and pepper. The strawberry-sugar-snap-pea salad appeared okay. My examination of the rice revealed more foreign flakes, this time very thin and orange and brown. Only it wasn’t dirt. My experience with Arch’s aquariums told me this was fish food. What the heck?

  I didn’t have time to find out what was going on. There was a loud crash inside the cabin, accompanied by an unearthly scream of pain. I dropped the platter and ran to the window as more howling erupted. I squinted through the wavy glass. One of the flats had broken loose from its clamp. It had crashed to the floor, with Leah underneath. For one ghastly moment, I saw Leah’s blood-covered face. No, I thought, no. Please God, I prayed, no.

  By the time I got inside, Boyd was commanding Julian to help him lift the heavy flat. When Boyd saw me, he shook his head.

  Chapter 19

  “What happened?” I demanded of Rustine, who didn’t reply.

  “Help us!” Julian yelled at Rufus. Bobby Whitaker stood to one side, seemingly paralyzed. Rufus and Ian ran to the far side of the flat and lifted at Boyd’s command.

  “Don’t touch anything!” Boyd commanded.

  Leah’s body was inert. She was breathing, but her entire right side appeared unnaturally folded. Her arm stuck out at a cruel angle; her leg wouldn’t move. She cried and moaned. Ian knelt down beside her and began to murmur words of comfort. Boyd snapped open his mobile to call an ambulance.

  I looked at the flat. Secured by an A-clamp to a pole that extended between the floor and ceiling, I couldn’t understand how it could suddenly come loose. Just at that moment? To hurt someone? It seemed very odd. Or very convenient?

  Boyd ordered me to bring clean, damp cloth napkins to wipe the blood off Leah’s face. Meanwhile, he gently checked her for shock and broken bones. When the E.M.S. arrived twenty minutes later, the paramedics shooed everyone away from her, then took great care getting her on a stretcher and across the creek to their vehicle. As suddenly as the crisis had developed, it was over. I asked one paramedic how she looked, and his tight-lipped answer was something along the lines of We can’t say.

  Boyd quietly told me he was going to examine the flat and the clamps to see if there was any evidence this was anything besides an accident. Rufus had already informed Boyd that flats occasionally came loose, but that this was the first time in a while one had actually fallen on somebody. Feeling disoriented, I walked back out to the deck and picked up the platter I had dropped. In the kitchen, I showed Julian the pepper-flake and fish-food additions and asked if he’d seen anything suspicious going on out at the tables.

  Julian’s face was dismayed. “No, nothing. Sabotage. Unbelievable.”

  I told him that I had suspected the same thing had happened with André. Maybe he had caught the saboteur?

  “Maybe,” Julian mused. “Or maybe it’s just somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

  When Boyd came out to the kitchen, he said he could see nothing that would indicate someone had jerry-rigged the clamps or the flat. He even wondered if Leah had been trying to move it, as the flat had fallen on her front rather than her back. As usual, he said, no one had seen anything.

  I sighed. Julian showed Boyd the platters of tainted food. He shook his head. “Cover them up and I’ll take them down to the department. I’ll see if the guys in the lab have any free time to analyze ‘em.”

  When we left, Hanna seemed subdued and far from her usual bossy self. So much for dealing with idiosyncrasies, I reflected. She said she would see us Friday morning unless the equipment could not be fixed. Leah’s job of casting for the auditions was largely past, and she could manage all the details. Coffee break, lunch, all right? she asked. With any luck, that would be their last day. I nodded and tucked Andre’s bills and menus under my arm. Two more days to figure out what was really going on at this place.

  On the drive home, Julian fell asleep. Quietly, I asked Boyd if he’d be willing to talk about the people at the cabin or its history. He nodded. Remembering the bitterness in Hanna’s tone when she’d visited me in the kitchen, I told him I was wondering about Hanna Klapper. Her parents had owned the Swiss Inn, now apartments. She was in dire financial straits because of her divorce. But what I didn’t know, I said, was if there was any history between Hanna and Gerald Eliot.

  Boyd kept his eyes on the road and his voice low. “The department looked into Hanna because she knows the museum so well, and that’s where Gerald was killed. But since she’s familiar with the collection, they asked why a knowledgeable thief would take cookbooks, and leave those antique Hopi dolls—”

  “Kachinas,” I supplied automatically.

  “Right,” Boyd continued. “Those things are valued in the thousands. A person without a whole lot of money wouldn’t take a book worth sixty bucks, would she?”

  “The missing cookbook has strange markings in it from Charlie Smythe.”

  “So? She knew that place inside and out. She wouldn’t need to kill somebody to get pages that she knew could be photocopied from the museum files, right?”

  “Gerald Eliot asked Hanna about Old West-style cooking. Making rolls. She even teased him about it. And Charlie Smythe had written to his wife in the stolen cookbook about making rolls.”

  Boyd glanced at me. “So?” His response to everything, it seemed. “I don’t know anything about making rolls. You asked about Charlie Smythe and the Merciful Migrations cabin. I’ve heard the rumors about a Denver outfit wanting to put one of those paint-pellet courses out there. Don’t know if they’re true yet or not. And of course, everyone’s heard about old Charlie Smythe.” Boyd chuckled. “Guy’s a legend. He was the greediest old bastard in the West. You wouldn’t catch me trying to rob a bank when I was in my late sixties.”

  “But he was c
aught,” I interjected.

  Boyd tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Yeah, finally. Basic rule of law enforcement: A criminal keeps breaking the law until he’s in jail.”

  “Keeps breaking the law. Do you know of any other crimes Charlie Smythe committed?”

  “Nope. But that doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes they won’t give you a hint as to what they’ve done until they’re behind bars. Then they’ll use their stories to keep you hopping. Sometimes.”

  We passed a meadow where a small herd of grazing elk was barely distinguishable from the boulders dotting the prairie grass.

  “The Swiss Inn,” I said slowly, thinking of Andre’s early history. “What do you know about its background?”

  Boyd said, “That place is an ongoing problem because skinheads are always trying to meet there. B’nai B’rith called us a while back, wanted to know about the swastikas on the floor of the old section, and the rumors from the war. We’ve never come up with anything except totally unsubstantiated rumors about the Heinzes, Hanna’s parents. Financially and in every other way, Hanna is absolutely as clean as a whistle. She belongs to no organizations beyond the historical society, and has been loyal and generous to them, at least until she had to quit and get a higher-paying job. Before the Swiss Inn was turned into apartments, whenever neo-Nazis tried to meet there, Hanna would call us.” He rocked the van from the dirt road onto the highway toward Aspen Meadow.

  Julian groaned as he awoke. I assured him we were almost home, although in truth, I was only paying half attention. An idea was forming in my mind. Did Charlie Smythe, a greedy con man who robbed for the fun of it, still have a tale to tell?

  At home, the yawning garage door revealed that the entire interior was filled with boxes: the kitchen cabinets had arrived. Just shows how eagerly retailers will part with discontinued merchandise, I thought. Boyd greeted Tom, filled him in briefly on what had happened at the cabin, and then took off with the tainted dishes. Tom handed me a note from Arch saying he and Lettie were listening to music at Todd’s house. Not to worry, he’d scrawled: Mrs. Druckman was making them sub sandwiches for lunch. Lettie would eat a sub sandwich? I doubted that. Matter of fact, what had she had at the Chinese place? Steamed squid?

  Tom, after asking us how we were, went back to sawing. His old friend Sergeant Zack Armstrong had come up for the morning to help him. Where the back wall had been, there were now three dusty windows decorated with the manufacturer’s stickers. The sudden vista on our backyard opened up by the wall of glass was disconcerting. I knew I’d get used to it, even love it, so I told myself not to make any negative comments.

  Zack and Tom had moved on to nailing down the strips of oak that were to be our new floor. Unfinished and dusty, it was hard to tell how they would look. Tom had brought in one of the cherry cabinets; it lay tilted against a hole-pocked wall. Julian and I gushed over how stunning the dark, carved box was. Tom, sweaty and intent, thanked us and then asked us to let him get back to work.

  Julian and I brought our crates of dirty dishes through the front door, wiped them with wet paper towels to remove dirt and food particles, and washed them in the downstairs bathtub. If only the health inspector could see us now. … I shuddered. It was nearly four o’clock by the time we finished. Julian offered to pick up Arch, take Lettie home, then get pizza and calzones for dinner. I handed him money from my wallet. It would appear that remodeling a kitchen, in addition to being expensive, was fattening.

  While Tom and Zack banged and hammered on the first floor, I took a long shower, wrapped myself in a thick terry-cloth robe, and settled down in our bedroom. First I called Lutheran Hospital, where the E.M.S. said they were taking Leah. No one at the hospital could give me any information yet, unfortunately. Next, I pulled out the packet Leah had given me. The disheveled pages of Andre’s menus and bills to Ian’s Images were meticulously numbered and dated but out of order. I put them in order and opened my calendar. I needed to reconstruct what André had told me about his meal-service plans, and how those had been disrupted by Ian’s breaking the window with the temper tantrum that had also cost him a camera and a whole lot of glass.

  The first day I had worked with André had been Monday, the eighteenth of August. I smoothed out the menu for that day and felt a twinge when I read Models’ Mushroom Soup and Goldy’s Vegetarian Dish—the Florentine cheesecakes. I traced the letters with my fingers, admiring André’s faithfully kept resolution to write as well as speak English. Burnt Sugar Cake. He’d given me careful instructions on not burning myself. I steered away from that particular irony While noting that beside the lunch menu for Tuesday, a different hand had written: André: Could you please serve lunch inside for the next 3 days? We’ll be working on the deck and need the space. L. Leah. That day, he had proceeded with Vichyssoise, Chilled Stuffed Artichokes, Marinated Beef Salad, Brioche, Fresh Fruit Skewers, and Grand Marnier Buttercream Cookies.

  On Wednesday the twentieth, he’d done a coffee break that consisted of Scallion Frittata, Fresh-fruit Pineapple Boats, and Scones with Lemon Curd. Wednesday’s lunch had featured Cream of Corn Soup, Lump Crab Salad, Green Beans Vinaigrette, Dill Rolls, and Chocolate Cake. On Thursday he’d treated the assembly to Spiral-cut Ham, Fruit Plate, and Pecan Rolls for the coffee break, While lunch had been an offering of Western-style Barbecue Ribs, Coleslaw, Potato Salad, Corn on the Cob, and Brownies. American cooking? Incredible.

  Friday we had catered together at the Homestead Museum, heard Sylvia’s sad tale of her violated museum, seen the children model. And he’d had his miniattack.

  He’d died before serving the Monday coffee break. He’d written the prep plans, though: Crème Brûlée Cups for 20—start Saturday. To that he’d added Peach Compote—make Sunday. Heavy on the cholesterol and sugar, but that was the French way.

  His bills had been uncomplicated: figuring ten to twenty people per day, service, tax, and gratuity included: ten dollars a pop for the coffee break, eighteen for the lunch. He’d averaged a daily gross of about seven hundred dollars. On Friday afternoon, he had written down the check number of the payment Leah had made to him for the first week’s work. I did not know whether he had ever deposited the check. I sighed and closed the notebook. Downstairs, the loud pow of Tom’s nail gun split the air.

  I would be seeing Pru Hibbard the following afternoon, at the memorial service. It would not be tactful to pose any questions about Andre’s week with the fashion folks. The last thing a bereaved widow needed was to imagine there was anything unusual about her husband’s death. Which, of course, there was.

  Slowly, I read back over the menus. I visualized André working on Sunday, peeling peaches for the compote he would serve on Monday morning for Ian’s Images. First, he would have placed the thickly sliced peaches in a baking dish, then reamed out a lemon for its juice, mixed the juice with some red wine, sugar, a cinnamon stick, and some cloves and a bit of salt. This he would have heated and poured over the glistening peaches before placing them in the oven. Then, for the other dish … Wait a minute.

  I closed my eyes and remembered André bustling about to prepare crème brûlée. He’d insisted on teaching me his old-fashioned way, although I’d ended up developing my own method. André would stir and heat eggs with cream to a rich custard, then chill the dish overnight, which is why he would have started it on Saturday. Then on Sunday he would have covered it with a thin layer of light brown sugar, and … Hold on.

  To caramelize the sugar, he did not use a hand-held propane torch, as I did. No: André used his own salamander, an old-fashioned iron tool heated over a fire and then run over the top of the crème, to make it brûlée. Like his butter-baller, his balloon whisks, and battered wooden spoons, André’s salamander came from the time before modern kitchen equipment was common. It was a curved, fancy implement that I’d seen many times in his red metal toolbox.

  In my mind’s eye I saw André’s dead body, his burned hands. Crème brûlée crusted by the heat of a salamander. Strangely sh
aped burns carved into the skin followed by death … or something like that. In any event, because of the shape of the burns, I knew the salamander must have caused the scars. How had it happened? When could the burning have happened? Not Sunday when he’d originally made the custards, or he would have put salve on them, wouldn’t he? Or bandages? He’d told the cabdriver he’d finished making the food … but he had to be at the cabin early for prep. Why? Could there have been some reason why he’d felt he had to make more custards Monday morning? What would that reason be? Could someone have him While he was cooking, as Rustine had startled me today, so that he burned himself, had chest pains, and took an overdose of nitroglycerin? If someone had surprised him, why wouldn’t that person have called for help when André collapsed, as Boyd had called for help today?

  It still didn’t make sense. But at least I knew one thing. André had been burned by his own salamander.

  I checked my watch: just before five. I put in a quick call to the morgue, and was astonished to be put straight through to Sheila O’Connor.

  “Sheila, it’s Goldy … look, I just didn’t know who else to call—”

  “No problem.”

  “Remember those marks on André’s hands?” When she mm-hmmed, I took a deep breath. “I know what caused them.” I told her about the menus, the crème brûlée, and the salamander.

  “So, what are you telling me?” she asked patiently. “That he was burned he was cooking? I never thought anything else.”

  What was I telling her, exactly? “Of course he was burned While he was cooking, but it just doesn’t add up. Why would he tell the cabdriver he was all done, and then proceed to make more food? If one of the photo people came to the cabin and told André extra people were showing up, and then André burned himself and collapsed, why didn’t the photo person call for help?”

  Sheila took a deep breath. “Goldy, you loved your teacher. I know you did. I know you hate to think of him as old and vulnerable. But he was. Our guys found his empty bottle of nitroglycerin, by the way. His doctor says the bottle should have been full.”