Libby couldn’t even discern the original pattern on the linoleum floor, let alone see out of the window by the sink. And she wasn’t even mentioning the fact that the counters were too low and the refrigerator should be in the Smithsonian. It wasn’t even frost free for heaven’s sake. It still had to be defrosted.
“Here,” Jura said.
Libby looked up at him as he plonked down two tins of caviar on the counter. He was wearing the same expression and clothes that he’d had on when she’d seen him in the caviar cooler.
“I want you to serve the sevruga directly out of the tin,” he instructed her. “The less movement the caviar experiences, the less chance of bruising the eggs. You can accompany the sevruga with toast points, butter, and a little sour cream, but that’s it. No chopped hard-boiled eggs. Especially no chopped onions.
“Those are an abomination.” Jura’s voice rose. “And I refuse to allow something like that under my roof. Also you may use the goose liver pâté we had earmarked for the post-wedding ceremony reception to make sandwiches with. No sense letting good food go to waste because of an unfortunate event. The devising of the rest of the menu I will leave up to you.”
Unfortunate event, Libby thought. Now there’s an interesting way to refer to the murder of your wife-to-be. As she regarded him she decided that she’d seen people manifest more emotion over the death of their pet hamsters then Jura was showing over the death of his bride. Of course maybe he just hid his emotions well. Or maybe this is the way they reacted in Estonia, never mind that Jura was born in the United States.
Maybe she was being judgmental, an emotion her mother had always warned her she had to guard against. Maybe Jura had really been upset when he’d gotten the news. Maybe he’d broken down and cried. Libby found herself wishing she’d been there when the security guards had told him about Leeza’s death, so she could have seen for herself. Then she quickly quashed that thought. My God, she reflected, if I’m not careful I’ll become infected by the Bernie bug. Bad enough to have one person in the family creating chaos. They didn’t need two.
Still, she had to admit that Jura’s reaction was strange. So, for that matter while she was on the subject, was everyone else’s. These people, all of them family members or members of the wedding party, were milling around in the place that had been set up for the post-wedding ceremony libations and from what Libby could see from the kitchen no one, except for Ditas and the Walker sisters, seemed terribly concerned that the bride was, to use her mother’s phrase, no longer among them.
Everyone else was chatting away. Joe, Jura’s youngest brother, was busy talking to one of Leeza’s bridesmaids, who was smiling and giggling, while another bridesmaid was batting her eyes at one of the security guards.
Libby decided that, despite the fact that Joe was definitely the smallest of the three brothers and had brown hair and brown eyes instead of blond hair and blue eyes, there was still a marked family resemblance. He had the same cleft chin and the same thin lips as Jura and Ditas, who was staring out the window.
Judging from the expression on his face, he seemed extremely upset which struck Libby as strange because he hadn’t impressed her as a man that cared much about anything. And then of course there was the maid of honor, Esmeralda Quinn.
A woman that her mother would have described as plain as a sack of potatoes, she was presently doing an excellent imitation of a limpet by gluing herself to Jura’s side. Looking at her even Libby had to concede that Bernie was right. One should never underestimate the power of a good haircut and properly applied makeup. She was imagining what her sister was going to say when they got home—something along the lines of “What was she thinking?”—when Esmeralda gave a fluttering little cough.
“One doesn’t see many chartreuse maid of honor dresses,” Libby heard her sister say.
Libby sighed. How did her sister do it? If she had said that Esmeralda would be insulted. Maybe it was Bernie’s tone? She always felt like such a clod next to her.
Esmeralda tittered. “Is that’s what it’s called? I keep forgetting.”
“The word for the color derives from the drink of the same name,” Bernie informed her. “It’s a liqueur flavored with angelica and hyssop made by the Carthusian monks at their monastery near Grenoble, France.”
“Fascinating. I had no idea.” Esmeralda smoothed down her skirt. “Frankly I don’t think it’s my best color.”
“Well, not many people can wear it,” Bernie said truthfully. Actually, she couldn’t think of anyone who could. While she was on the subject, the drink wasn’t too great, either. It tasted like cough medicine.
“Leeza,” Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes with the crumpled up Kleenex she was holding in her hand before going on, “said it brought out the pink in my complexion.”
More like the yellow Bernie thought. But in reality the color was the least of the issues with the dress. The thing might have worked on a beautiful sixteen-year-old with a great body but on a fortysomething woman it was a disaster.
The rucking on the bodice made Esmeralda look even more flat chested than she already was. Add to that the form-revealing bottom which merely served to emphasize Esmeralda’s pot belly and wide hips and you had something close to an act of sartorial cruelty.
Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes again. “I wanted to wear something a little more . . . conservative, but Leeza insisted I get this dress. She said I had to start showing off my assets, otherwise I’d never get anyone interested in me. Now I can hardly wait to get out of it.” Esmeralda let out a small sob. “Just looking at it reminds me of Leeza.”
And not in a good way I’m betting, Bernie thought. Personally she would never have gotten into something like that for any reason. Leeza must have hated her, Bernie reflected. What other motive could she have had for talking Esmeralda into wearing something so unflattering?
But why had Esmeralda acquiesced? That was the other question. Obviously she knew what she looked like. Did she feel she had no choice? She must have. But why? Even though Esmeralda wasn’t a great beauty, when Bernie had last seen her sitting at a desk in Raid’s office dressed in a business suit she’d looked moderately acceptable. Now she looked like a clown.
As Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes one last time and dropped her hand to her side, Bernie realized she had a tic going underneath her left eye, something she hadn’t seen when she’d been sitting behind the desk. “I don’t want to talk about my dress anymore,” she told Bernie. “It’s just too painful, isn’t it, Jurie?” Esmeralda said as she brushed an invisible speck of dust off of Jura’s jacket.
Jurie? Bernie thought as Jura nodded absentmindedly and began opening the can of caviar he’d brought in with him. Now that’s interesting. At the office, it had been, “Yes, Mr. Raid. No, Mr. Raid. Right away, Mr. Raid.”
As Bernie was thinking about the implications of what she’d just heard and seen, Esmeralda turned and faced Libby.
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble I was wondering if you could put Splenda on the table instead of any of those other artificial sweeteners,” she told her.
“I don’t think there’s any in the kitchen,” Libby replied.
Esmeralda’s face fell. “Oh my. I can’t eat anything artificial. It’s bad for my gallbladder.”
Libby put on her best customer smile. “Perhaps I can call someone from the store and they can bring it to the gate and the guards can relay it to us.”
“Don’t bother,” Jura said. “She doesn’t need the sugar.”
“Really?” Bernie said as Esmeralda cringed.
Libby shot her sister a warning glance as she watched Esmeralda begin to pull at the hairs on her eyebrow. Okay, she thought. So now we know for sure that the man’s a total asshole and Esmeralda has no spine.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” Libby quickly asked Esmeralda, trying to forestall a comment from Bernie.
Esmeralda gave her a tremulous smile and put her hand back down by her side.
“If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love a half-decaf, half-regular, skimmed milk cappuccino.”
“I’ll manage something,” Libby assured her. Surely they had to have an espresso machine around here somewhere.
Esmeralda dabbed at her eyes again. “Thank you so much. And oh yes, Theodora, that’s the tall, thin, woman in the yellow taffeta dress, would like decaffeinated tea with a slice of lemon on the side and make sure Jura’s coffee is decaf as well. Otherwise the poor man will be up all night, won’t you, Jurie?”
Jura gave her a brief wintry smile, took the lid off the tin, and opened a drawer beneath the counter and took out a small horn spoon.
“One never samples caviar with a metal spoon,” Jura explained to Libby, pointedly ignoring Esmeralda. “In fact, you never put caviar anywhere near metal. It has a disastrous effect on the taste. The interaction of the metal and the roe is most unpleasant, but then I’m sure you already knew that.”
“Actually I do,” Libby said even though she could tell that Jura wasn’t really interested in her answer.
In truth she would have said that even if she didn’t know anything. The man was absolutely insufferable. She couldn’t help thinking that Leeza and he had deserved each other.
“Actually,” Bernie chimed in. “Some people claim that metal—well not silver as much—affects the taste of anything it touches. It can even change the color of some food as it cooks. Witness the effects of cooking tomatoes in an aluminum pan, and I won’t even go into the controversy over aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease.” She didn’t even pause for breath before going on.
“And as for spoons—now that’s a really interesting subject. Some author, I forget who, wrote that spoons are the Ur eating utensil, if you will. I don’t think forks were used until the seventeenth century, whereas spoons have been around for almost three thousand years. They’ve been found in various digs. Some were made of clay, others of bone and shell. So you see,” Bernie pointed to the spoon Jura was holding, “you’re continuing a tradition that goes back three millennia. It’s really amazing when you think about it, isn’t it?”
Jura blinked several times in rapid succession. “Fascinating,” he finally commented as he turned his attention to the tin of caviar.
Libby watched as he dipped his spoon in the can and drew out a small mound of glistening dark gray eggs. Then he closed his eyes, slowly raised the spoon to his lips, and tipped the contents between his lips. He rolled the eggs around in his mouth and took a bite.
His eyes flew open. He reached for the tin and examined it. A slow line of color crept up his face. He whirled around and strode out of the kitchen. The swinging door almost hit Esmeralda in the face as she ran after him.
“Jurie, Jurie,” she trilled, “what’s the matter?”
If Jura answered her Libby didn’t hear it. Instead Jura called for his two brothers.
“Ditas,” he yelled. “Joe. Come here this instant. I have discovered something most disturbing. Perhaps you can explain this to me.”
Chapter 8
Libby turned to Bernie. “What was that all about?”
“I don’t have a clue.” At which point Bernie went to the door and peeked out into the living room.
Jura was huddled in the far corner of the room with his two brothers. He was waving his arms up and down, while his younger brother Joe was rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and Ditas was shaking his head from one side to another. All three were ignoring Esmeralda.
“He seems really upset,” Bernie commented. “In fact this is the most emotion I’ve seen from Jura since we’ve arrived.”
“I think he’s really creepy,” Amber said, bending down to retie her shoelace. “I wouldn’t marry him no matter how much money he has.”
“Obviously, Leeza didn’t share your opinion.” Bernie went back to the counter. “I wonder if they signed a pre-nup?” she mused as she reached for the spoon Jura had used, washed it off, dipped it into the can, and took a taste.
“This stuff is not good,” she said after she’d rolled the eggs around in her mouth. “I bet these are paddlefish eggs instead of sturgeon roe. Either that or the sevruga is actually a lower-grade caviar. Or the tin has been incorrectly stored, compromising the product’s quality. Caviar spoils very quickly. In any case, one thing is for sure. The sevruga doesn’t taste the way it’s supposed to.”
“What would it mean if it was paddlefish eggs?” Libby asked.
Bernie started tapping her fingers on the counter. “Oh a difference of seven dollars an ounce versus sixty-five to seventy dollars an ounce. At least that’s what the prices were the last time I looked. Paddlefish is way cheaper because it’s domestic. Actually I think there’s a lot of virtue in getting something local versus something from far away. However, there’s more cachet attached to getting some from Russia or Iran . . .”
Libby held up her hand. “Please, no lectures now.”
“Sorry,” Bernie told her.
Libby took the spoon from Bernie and tasted the caviar. She wrinkled her nose. “It’s very salty.”
“Exactly,” Bernie said. “With the good stuff when you crush an egg between your teeth you should get a burst of a clean, briny flavor. It’s almost like having a taste of the ocean in your mouth. It doesn’t taste like this.”
“How do you know?”
Bernie shrugged. “I used to eat it out in L.A. all the time. It’s great diet food. High in protein. Low in carbs. Lots of minerals. Spoon it on scrambled eggs and you’re good to go. It’s the perfect meal.”
“Caviar as a diet food. Why didn’t I think of that?” Libby said.
“If you were rich you would,” Bernie replied.
Amber looked in the can. “I don’t care how rich I was, I’d never eat that stuff. It looks gross.”
Libby handed her the spoon. “Here, taste it.”
Amber put the spoon down and moved away. “Fish eggs, I don’t think so.”
Libby stared at the tin. “I guess we shouldn’t serve this.”
Bernie indicated a skinny looking ginger tabby that had magically appeared next to her feet. “I bet she would like it.” And she scooped a half a cup of roe out onto a small plate and put it on the floor for the kitty.
“Jura’s going to love that,” Libby observed.
“Well, it’s just going to spoil,” said Bernie. “And anyway, he’s not here.”
Libby watched the cat eat for a few moments while she pondered what she could put out for people to eat that she could pull together fairly rapidly. She started opening and closing kitchen cabinets. There wasn’t much in the way of food there.
“Well one thing is clear,” she said to Amber and Bernie when she’d finished with her inventory. “Jura and his brothers don’t eat at home a lot.”
“So what now?” Bernie asked.
Libby thought for another moment. “Open-faced sandwiches.”
Bernie wrinkled her nose. “Sandwiches?”
“Yes,” Libby said firmly. “Sandwiches.”
For openers, they were easy to make and they had other merits as well. Sandwiches were really comfort food. They had the merit of being familiar, they were homey—everyone’s mom had made them sandwiches when they were a kid—and they were filling, which was good because Libby had observed over the years that death tended to whet people’s appetites. And most importantly, you could make them out of anything.
Aside from the goose liver pâté Jura had asked her to serve, Libby had spied some fairly decent looking tomatoes on the far counter. She figured she could combine them with the mozzarella she’d seen in the fridge. Hopefully the cook wasn’t planning to serve the tomatoes and the cheese later in the week. But if she were, she’d have to get over it. This was an emergency.
Of course the sandwiches would be better if the tomatoes were local instead of hothouse, but even so they wouldn’t be bad. Mozzarella and tomatoes had to be one of the better combinations going.
Now she needed a third th
ing. Libby tapped her fingers on the counter while she weighed her options. Finally she decided on asparagus and smoked Gouda. That would look good and the smoky taste of the Gouda would make a nice foil for the sweetness of the asparagus. They could decorate the platters with the grapes in the fridge and they’d be all set.
Libby bit at her fingernail. “Okay we just need something for dessert.”
“We can always serve the wedding cake,” Bernie suggested.
“Ha. Ha. Talk about bad taste.”
“Somehow, I don’t think the people here are going to care.”
Amber spoke up. “I saw some cookies in the pantry if that’ll help,” she said as the kitty scampered away.
Libby nodded.
“Good. Amber you go get them, I’ll start on the sandwiches, and Bernie you make the coffee. I saw it in the top cabinet to the left of the window.”
Bernie nodded. “You want to use this?” she asked after she’d located it. “It’ll just take me a couple of minutes to go get our stuff out of the garage.”
Libby shook her head, as she dug into her backpack. “Don’t bother.” She didn’t know why but all of a sudden she was overwhelmed with an urge for a chocolate chip cookie. As she looked for it, she decided maybe she was feeling this way because Esmeralda and Jura reminded her of the way things had been between herself and her ex-boyfriend, Orion. Even now, thinking about how she was always running after him made her flinch.
Finally she found the cookie at the bottom of her backpack. Perhaps I should save it, she thought as she took it out. But then she decided no. Eat it now. As she bit into it and her mouth was filled with the flavors of vanilla, chocolate, and sweet butter, she could feel her body relaxing. Suddenly she had a flash of insight. This is how an addict feels, she told herself. I am addicted to sugar. I have to do something. But then she pushed that thought to the back of her mind and concentrated on the present. Specifically what kind of coffee to serve.
“Use the stuff you found in the cabinet. It’ll be faster,” she told Bernie after she’d taken another nibble of her cookie. Over the years she’d learned that most people in America were used to drinking something that was more akin to brown-colored water, than coffee. What counted was getting it made and getting it out there. Taste was secondary.
A Catered Wedding Page 7