Dark Tort

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Hello, Goldy, are you in there?” Marla’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. “I’m dropping my Mercedes off for some work in a few minutes, and a repairman is driving me out to Creekside Spa. I’m supposed to be at the spa in half an hour. Do you want me to stay with you for a while longer, or not?”

  “Yes, please stay.”

  “Let me make us all some more coffee.” Tom was suddenly at my side. “Sit down, Goldy.”

  “I don’t want any more caffeine, thanks.”

  Tom lowered his voice. “Are you all right?”

  I shrugged and didn’t mention the Journey Cake, the food for the christening and the ribbon-cutting receptions, the plumbing problems, or Dusty. Instead, I sat down at our kitchen table next to Julian, who looked disconsolate. Was he remembering a time he’d been with Dusty, to the movies, for a hike? Was he recalling what it was like to kiss her? I didn’t want to think about it.

  Tom, all assurance, placed a pair of cups under the nozzles and pressed buttons. Rich ropes of espresso hissed out. Marla placed plump, bejeweled hands on Julian’s and my arms.

  “You two should take some time off,” she advised.

  I snorted; Julian looked out the window. Tom placed the cups in front of Marla and Julian, then raised an eyebrow in my direction.

  “Miss G., Julian, Marla’s right.” He unhooked his cell phone from his belt. “Let me call Victim Assistance.”

  I squealed, “Forget it!” with such ferocity that Tom put down his phone and patted my shoulder.

  “Okay, Miss G.,” he murmured. “Whatever you want.”

  “Goldy. Julian.” Marla’s voice was full of alarm. “Don’t cook today, please. Don’t even stay at home. Come with me to the spa. We can leave now and I’ll call them on the cell, book the two of you with the same package I’m getting. They take guys, Julian, no worries. You could each get a ninety-minute massage, oil and water treatment, full-body wrap—”

  I cleared my throat. Did neither Tom nor Marla understand that they just weren’t helping? Julian gave me a knowing glance. Finally he stood up and clicked buttons on my kitchen computer. I squinted. He’d brought up my catering schedule and was pushing more buttons. My printer spat out recipes.

  Oh yes, Julian, also in the food business, knew that cooking healed. The two of us could try the Journey Cake again. Creaming butter and sugar, sifting flour, and mixing, mixing, mixing: all these would help. Listening to Tom and Marla, on the other hand, was driving me nuts.

  “All right, all right, I give up. My body will be done at half past two,” Marla said, her voice suddenly plaintive. “But my car won’t be done until five. I hate to bring this up, Goldy, but you promised to pick me up at the spa. Want me to get the repairman to come get me?”

  “No, no, I’ll do it. It’ll help me get my mind off the fact that I promised Sally Routt I’d look into her daughter’s death.”

  I was escorting her to the front door, but she stopped in the hallway so she could point a crimson-painted nail at my face. “You’re nuts. You also look like hell. Don’t go anywhere without me. I mean, after you pick me up.”

  I smiled. “So does that mean you’re willing to come down to Christian Brothers High School with me to pick up Arch?”

  An unexpected cloud passed over Marla’s features. She mumbled, “You’re not taking him for another driving lesson, are you?”

  “C’mon, girlfriend. I am, after all, a very good teacher.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “That and the fact that Arch asked if he could try out my Mercedes.”

  “Oh yes? Let’s see, your new car’s at least five months old. I mean, it already needs work. If you let Arch drive it sometime, well, who knows—”

  The bejeweled fingers flashed in front of my eyes. “I know you’re kidding, so don’t even finish that thought.” With a mumbled farewell, she flounced out.

  When I came back into the kitchen, Tom was arranging slices of goat cheese and cooked beets on salads of mixed field greens. Julian was concentrating on measuring out ingredients for a vinaigrette.

  “C’mere, Miss G.” Tom motioned me forward, and I walked into his arms. “I’m in this crime-fighting business. I know you never get used to…what you saw last night.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” My voice next to his shoulder was muffled. I shuddered, and he pulled me in tighter. “She was just so…so—”

  “I know. Young. Unfinished. Hopeful.”

  “Right.” I pulled away from Tom. “I need to make a call.”

  “Goldy,” Tom said, “take it easy for a while, will you?”

  “Just one call,” I replied, thinking of Sally’s plea that I help her find out what had happened to her daughter. I snagged the phone and my purse and slipped into the living room. There, I took out my little handheld and looked up the home number of Wink Calhoun, receptionist at H&J. I tapped in the numbers, without knowing what I was going to say. Wink was, had been, Dusty’s closest friend at the firm. But Wink and I were also chums of a kind, since she had adopted Latte, a basset hound we had inherited from a friend.

  Wink answered on the first ring. I could hear Latte howling in the background. “Hello?” As usual, Wink’s Southern drawl was more pronounced when she was upset. “Goldy? I have caller ID,” she explained, her voice cracking. “What happened to Dusty? The police have been here, and Richard is on his way over…Latte! Stop howling, please!”

  The dog ignored her.

  “Oh, Wink,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I know how close you and Dusty were—”

  “I’m in hail.” Hell. Yeah; me, too. Her voice turned pleading. “Why would someone do this?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want to come over to our place? I have to go out for a while, but my husband, Tom, and our family friend Julian Teller are here. I…just thought you might not want to be alone.”

  “I can’t.” Caint. “King Richard is bringing over some work for me to do here at my house. The cops won’t let us back into…back into…” She started crying again, then clearly made a huge effort to stop. “I’d like to see you.”

  “You want to come to our house later?” I asked. “Say for dinner?”

  Another sob. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling so good. I want to know why someone did this. Can’t you help the cops? Haven’t you done that before? What if somebody gets away with this crime?”

  “I’m trying, Wink. Look, come over to our house when you finish your work, okay? Julian Teller will be here and can let you in.”

  “Well, maybe.”

  “You know how you were talking about my helping with the case, Wink?” When she mmm-hmmed, I made my voice firm. “I was hoping you could write down everything Dusty was working on.”

  “I don’t know that stuff. That’s why they had her doing it.”

  My stomach was growling, I was exhausted, and Wink was being Wink.

  “Well, if you can think of anything, anything at all, we could go over it later.” That was about as far as I was going to get in one phone call, I reasoned. People want you to figure something out, but when you ask them to do some work in helping with the figuring, they get schizzy. We signed off.

  “Hey,” I said, surveying the kitchen table, which Tom had carefully set with three place settings. “I just realized I’m starving.”

  Tom beamed. Soon he and Julian and I were tucking into beds of crunchy greens, whose accents of sweet, crunchy fall beets and creamy, tart cheese were perfectly complemented by Tom’s sharp balsamic vinaigrette and the soft rolls he’d heated—with a pat of butter melting inside each one.

  “So who were you on the phone with?” Julian asked, once we were washing the dishes.

  “Wink Calhoun. Remember she took Latte off our hands when Scout kept attacking him?” Julian and Tom nodded, their faces grim. Our adopted cat had not taken well to the new, ultrafriendly basset hound, and had used his claws to show it. “She’s the receptionist at Hanrahan and Jule. Anyway, I invited her over here f
or dinner, hope that’s okay. She might be willing to talk to us about her best friend at that law firm, Dusty Routt.”

  Tom’s cell rang and he moved into the hallway. When he came back, he asked if Julian would be staying at the house to cook. When Julian replied that he was, Tom said he was going down to the department. Before leaving, he gave me another hug and told me to call him if anything, anything at all, came up. I promised I would, and he took off.

  Julian placed the printed-out recipes for Donald Ellis’s birthday party in a neat pile on the counter. “Where do you want to start?”

  “Worst first,” I replied.

  So. With the index card that Nora Ellis had given me for her husband’s birthday cake laid on the counter, Julian and I began placing the ingredients on our workspace: unsalted butter, apple cider, flour, spices.

  “What, no eggs? Why isn’t there a real recipe?” Julian wondered aloud. “Are you just supposed to add things in order without a thought as to how they’re incorporated?” He stopped measuring sugar and stared at the list of ingredients. “This recipe doesn’t look right.”

  I sighed, placed the butter in the mixer, and flipped the switch. “I know. The folks coming across the country in covered wagons didn’t have all our ingredients, and I know most recipes for Journey Cake don’t have eggs. But I’ve tasted Journey Cake, and it’s good. So you’re right. Something is wrong with Nora’s recipe, or rather, Charlie Baker’s recipe—”

  “But Charlie Baker was a great cook,” Julian interjected. “I know he just listed ingredients on his paintings, but everything I’ve made from them has been great.”

  “Ditto. Maybe I messed this thing up when I made it the first time. Plus, the recipe needs to be doubled to make enough for the party. My proportions could have been off.”

  Julian stared at the mixer blades cutting swathes through the butter. “Are you sure this was one of Charlie’s recipes? Nora Ellis sure doesn’t cook, and she proudly informed me that her mother grew up with a cast of thousands. Thousands of servants, that is.”

  “The cake is related to her present for Donald.” I picked up the wax paper cradling the sugar and allowed it to snow into the butter. “She’s giving him a painting by Charlie Baker. It was one of the last ones he did before he died. He gave it the name Cake Series II.”

  Julian whistled. “That must have set her back a bit. Last I heard, Charlie’s paintings of food, with the ingredients lettered underneath, were worth fifty thousand each. And up. That’s a lot of cakes.”

  “I know, I know. But I was happy for Charlie to make all that money, even if he had an awful short time to spend it. Once he got that diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, all the money in the country couldn’t help him.”

  “Such a bummer,” Julian agreed.

  “So I want to get his recipe right. This time, anyway.”

  Julian nodded. I added half the dry ingredients to the sugar and butter, stirred carefully, poured in the cider, then tipped in the rest of the dry ingredients.

  “Looks awful thick,” Julian mused.

  “Like cement.” The biceps and triceps in my arms were nowhere near equal to the task, so Julian took over while I buttered the pan. “Sometimes coffee-cake batter is really thick,” I said hopefully. “Cookie batter, too, and both of them turn out moist and great.”

  Julian scraped the batter into the pan and slid it into the oven. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.

  “Oh God, Julian, I’m sorry. You want to go up and rest?”

  “No, boss, it’s not that. It’s…It’s Dusty. I mean, I hadn’t seen her too much over the past couple of years—almost three years, I guess, since I started college. We broke up when she was…well, seventeen, I guess. But we always got along after that. I mean, we were friends. I just…imagined she’d always be there, you know?” He exhaled. “You really don’t think that kids you went to school with are going to be murdered.”

  “I know.” I sat down beside him. “I’m sorry. Wink’s going to be a wreck, too.” Julian rubbed his face. “She and Dusty were such great buds. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now.”

  “This is so bad.”

  I murmured comfort while Julian ran his hands through his short, dark brown hair. Julian had first come into our lives with a bleached-blond Mohawk haircut, and an over-the-top hostile attitude. He’d gradually become an indispensable part of our family, inspiring Arch with his dedication to swimming and studying, inspiring me by being a genius in the kitchen, and gradually dropping his chip-on-the-shoulder to wrap all of us in a stubborn, bearlike affection. Yet like Arch, he now felt desolate and guilty.

  I peeked in at the cake, which looked as if it was shrinking into a hard sponge. I muttered a curse under my breath. Julian looked in the oven and shook his head.

  “Just make a regular butter cake,” Julian said. “Trust me, Goldy. Nora Ellis will never know the difference.”

  “Yeah. But what if, one day, she decides she wants to cook? And if she tries to make Journey Cake and it flops, she’ll ask me why I didn’t use her recipe, and demand her money back.”

  “She might ask for her money back, yeah, but she is much too tied up with shopping, manicures, and talking on the phone with her girlfriends ever to want to cook, or ever to bake a cake. Why is this recipe so important, anyway?”

  “Because it’s on the painting. Have to say, now I’m really curious to know if Charlie screwed up this recipe, or if Nora did when she copied it down. But I don’t know where I’d get another recipe from Charlie Baker to test.”

  Julian bit his lip, deep in thought. “Wait a sec. Don’t you remember when we did that fund-raising spaghetti party for the football uniforms at Arch’s new school? Turns out, Charlie Baker was an orphan who went to the Christian Brothers High School, back when it was an orphanage. He gave them a bunch of his paintings, and they’re hanging in one of the halls. Didn’t you see them? I just glanced at a couple on the way to the men’s room. What caught my eye was the one for Asparagus Quiche.”

  “Oh, man, now I’m really curious. Let me phone the school.”

  I put in a call to CBHS, where an obliging secretary said they were asked for Charlie’s recipes all the time. They’d put together a leaflet that they sold for five bucks—payable to the Football Boosters—to anyone who wanted one. I asked the secretary about the quiche, and if she’d heard of Charlie’s Cake Series. Maybe I or II? She had no idea what I was talking about.

  “But we’d be very happy to sell you a booklet,” she sang out. “We keep them in with his paintings, so people can see the real thing if they want. We had to move them out of the hallway,” she said, her voice suddenly morose. “They got too valuable to keep them hanging between the lockers.”

  I thanked her, hung up, and stared at Nora’s card again. “I still think Nora could have copied it down wrong. Perhaps Charlie was getting addled toward the end of his life.”

  Julian shrugged. “It’s more likely Nora screwed it up. If the CBHS secretary doesn’t know about Charlie’s cake recipes, then let’s just make ‘Old Reliable.’”

  “That’s a possibility. What would I do without you, Julian?”

  “Fall apart,” Julian muttered, but then he smiled as he removed the hard disk of fallen cake from the oven.

  I was taking out more butter and eggs when the doorbell rang. When I looked through the security peephole, I saw Nora Ellis, tall, blond, and blue-eyed, looking perfect in a herringbone blazer and black pants, standing next to Ookie Claggett, wife of Alonzo Claggett, aka Claggs. Ookie, a muscled, short-haired brunette, was always dressed for squash. Today, despite the fact that it was now October, she wore white shorts and a white T-shirt with the logo of Aspen Meadow Country Club. She was even carrying a squash racket, which she lofted and waved at the peephole.

  My heart vibrated in my chest as I opened the door.

  “You need help?” Julian yelped from the kitchen.

  “No, thanks.”

&
nbsp; “Hi there,” I said as I slid out onto the front porch. I certainly did not want to precipitate another conflict between Julian and Nora Ellis. “We’re working inside,” I stammered, “so things are a mess and I can’t…well, you two probably heard about the…death at H&J this morning.”

  “Oh, heavens,” said Ookie, tapping her racket on her thigh. “We did. That poor girl.”

  I couldn’t interpret her tone. According to Marla, who kept track of such things, Nora Ellis and Ookie Claggett had a love-hate, gossipdependent, ultracompetitive friendship. I addressed Nora. “Under the circumstances, Mrs. Ellis, Nora, I…didn’t think you’d want to go ahead with—”

  “My husband’s birthday party?” Her voice was querulous as she brushed the curtain of platinum hair back from her fine-featured face. “Well, I don’t know what to do, actually. He’s a mess. Everyone at the firm is.”

  “Well, um, you might want to ask him about the party. It’s possible he’ll think it…wouldn’t work.”

  “I know,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go ahead with it. Still, I think everyone desperately needs cheering up.” She hesitated. “Were you able to make the cake?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it right now. Actually, just double-checking here, but do you still happen to have that list of ingredients?”

  “Why, yes,” said Nora, surprised. While Ookie sighed and rolled her eyes and indicated this was a huge waste of her time, Nora dug around in her Prada bag until she found an index card. “Do you want to just take this?” she asked.

  “No, I’ll copy it, thanks.” I excused myself, wiggled back through the front door, and returned with my own index card and a pen. Nora proceeded to read me the exact list of ingredients we’d already used. “Are you set now?”

  “Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

  “All right, then, I will check with Donald,” she said as she and Ookie turned to go. After a moment, she added, “Everyone is going to be so upset, if we do go forward. Maybe you need some help.”

  “No, thanks, I’m fine—” I began.