Rocky Mountain Getaway

by Cindy Myers

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll have more snow before winter is really over,” Cassie said. “But while the weather is so nice, I wanted to offer to take you on a tour of the town’s most historic buildings. We could start with my home, on Fourth Street, which is one of the most distinguished residences. It was built by my great-grandfather, Festus Wynock, who founded the town in 1890.”

  “Perhaps some other time.” Faye Anne leaned away from Cassie. “I need to focus on preparing for my show at the moment.”

  “I can help you with that, too,” Cassie said. “I have some experience with stage productions.”

  “A television show is a little different from putting on a play,” Faye Anne said.

  “Still, it’s all about managing people,” Cassie said. “And I certainly have experience with that.”

  Gloria realized Cassie was looking at her and fought the urge to stick her tongue out at the old windbag. Cassie didn’t have to manage her; after four years at the library, Gloria knew the job as well as Cassie did. Maybe even better.

  She looked away—right at Jack, who winked at her, surprising a giggle out of her. She smothered it with a cough.

  “You’re not getting sick, are you?” Cassie asked. “Stay far from me if you are.”

  Gloria shook her head and backed away.

  “I appreciate your offer of help, Ms. Wynock,” Faye Anne said. “But I think Jack and I have everything under control.”

  The wrinkles around Cassie’s mouth deepened. “If you’re sure . . .”

  This was getting pathetic. Gloria couldn’t stand it anymore. “What Cassie is saying is that she really wants to be invited to the dinner at the Last Dollar,” she said. “Please invite her and all our lives will be much easier.”

  Once more, Lucille looked as if she was trying not to laugh. Jack was laughing, though no one paid attention to him. Cassie had frozen, her mouth in a grimace halfway between a smile and a frown. Only Faye Anne remained placid. “Is that what you want, really?” she asked.

  Cassie managed to unfreeze enough to nod. “Yes. Of course, not because I think it necessary to stoop—”

  Gloria stepped on Cassie’s toe. Hard. Her opinions about reality TV or the Last Dollar or anything else, which would surely all be negative, weren’t going to help persuade Faye Anne to give her a previous invitation.

  “Of course, I’d love to have you at the table,” Faye Anne said. “Both of you.”

  Gloria blinked. Both of who?

  “She means you.” Jack leaned forward and spoke low in her ear.

  Her? On TV? Jack nodded, as if he knew what she was thinking. “Thank you,” she said. Then she recalled who had issued the coveted invitation and turned to Faye Anne. “Thank you. I’d love to come to dinner.”

  “Of course,” Cassie added, with less enthusiasm. “We’d love to.” She watched Gloria, clearly puzzled. Could it be that the mighty Cassie Wynock was beholden to her lowly assistant for a favor?

  What a new and powerful feeling. One Gloria might even get used to.

  Wednesdays in the off-season—before Memorial Day or after Labor Day—were the slowest nights of the week at the Last Dollar, so Janelle and Danielle had chosen Wednesday for the final test of the menu for their What’s Cookin’? USA debut. They hung the CLOSED sign on the door right after lunch and set to work.

  Maggie and Jameso arrived first, a little after seven. “Oh my gosh, everything looks so gorgeous,” Maggie said, as she took in the table set with white linens and candles. “I feel like we should have dressed up more.” She smoothed her fisherman’s sweater over her baby bump.

  “No, no, you’re all fine, just the way you are.” Danielle rushed forward to greet them. She wore a long white apron over black slacks and a black Japanese tunic embroidered with blue, pink, and yellow butterflies. Lacquered chopsticks jutted from her hair, which she’d pulled into Princess Leia buns on either side of her ears.

  “You look very nice,” Janelle agreed. She’d opted for a padded gold vest embroidered in red over a red long-sleeved blouse and a black floor-length skirt. She’d discarded her usual bandana in favor of a thin gold headband, and gold and diamond chandelier earrings.

  The other guests arrived soon after Maggie and Jameso were seated: Lucille and her daughter, Olivia, and Olivia’s fiancé, D.J. Gruber.

  When everyone was seated, Janelle moved to the front of the room. “Thank you, everyone, for coming tonight,” she said. “Your support really means a lot to us.”

  “It’s not exactly a hardship to eat a free meal you two prepared,” Jameso said. He spread his napkin in his lap. “I skipped lunch to get ready for this.”

  “The menus beside your plates will also double as ballots,” Janelle explained. “We want you to vote for your favorite at each course.”

  “Except the salad,” Danielle said. “We only have one salad because there aren’t a lot of really fresh greens this time of year.”

  “It’s going to be hard to pick a favorite,” Olivia said, studying the menu, a simple computer printout that listed spiced pumpkin soup, cream of tomato and basil, buttered radishes on grilled sourdough rounds, goat-cheese-stuffed mushrooms, arugula and dandelion salad, roasted lamb chops, crab-stuffed trout, herbed new potatoes, lemon pepper haricot verts, ginger carrots, raspberry linzer torte, and chocolate pots de crème with fresh raspberries.

  “Try,” Danielle said. “We want to really wow the viewers, and we’ve been testing dishes so much lately, we can’t tell what’s good and what’s not.”

  “If you two made it, it will be good,” Maggie said. “And everyone who watches will wish they were here eating with us.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Lucille said. “We could use another reason for people to come to town and spend money.”

  “You’ll want to eat those words when we’re all waiting in line to eat because the café is too packed with out-of-towners,” Jameso said.

  “Hush, or I’ll start calling you Bob Junior,” Maggie said, and the others laughed. Bob Prescott was famous for his dislike of tourists and outsiders.

  “We have to make it onto the show first,” Danielle said. “Faye Anne hasn’t spent more than five minutes in the café yet. She might change her mind and decide to take the show somewhere else.”

  “Not after she came all this way,” Jameso said. “And that cameraman of hers has been filming all over town. He’s probably shot enough to make ten shows about Eureka, though as far as I can tell it’s all scenery. He even came into the Dirty Sally and shot footage of me serving Bob a beer.”

  “Nothing new about that,” Olivia said. “Bob drinks at the Dirty Sally every night.”

  Danielle retreated to the kitchen and began plating the food for Janelle to deliver to the diners. The soups were first, served in small cups, so that everyone could try both. “I’ve never had pumpkin in soup before,” Jameso said, “But it’s delicious.”

  “I always thought tomato-basil was my favorite,” Lucille, seated across from him, said. “But I have to admit, the pumpkin is even better.”

  From there, they moved to salads, then the entrees. “You can’t beat good trout,” Jameso declared.

  “But the lamb is divine,” Maggie argued.

  “You can’t choose lamb over local trout,” D.J. said.

  “The lamb is local, too,” Olivia pointed out.

  “It’s a tie on the entrée,” Janelle said, as she carried a stack of dirty plates back into the kitchen. “I guess we’ll have to go with whatever we can get enough of.”

  Danielle mopped her forehead with a clean dish towel and turned back to the stove. “Maybe we should just do cheeseburgers and call it good enough. We could change the name of the place to the Greasy Spoon. Or I know—My Last Nerve, instead of the Last Dollar.”

  Janelle tweaked one of the chopsticks in her hair. “Hang in there. You’re doing great. Everyone loved the sides, too, though the carrots were the slight favorite.”

  “Let them fight it out over desse
rt.” Danielle indicated the plated servings of torte and pots de crème. “I hope I didn’t overdo the raspberries.”

  “Impossible.” Janelle pinched a corner off a wedge of torte and popped it into her mouth. “Cassie’s grandmother was obviously a genius in the kitchen, if this is her recipe.”

  “Right.” Danielle rolled her eyes at the accusation Cassie refused to let die. “The old girl dictated it to me from the grave. She said she couldn’t bear to have it die with her, since her granddaughter clearly wasn’t ever going to do anything with it.”

  Janelle set aside the plate. “You’re doing the family proud. Maybe we should rename it on the menu. We could call it Grandmother’s Linzer Torte, just to mess with Cassie.”

  “I dare you.”

  Laughing, Janelle exited the kitchen with the tray of desserts. Danielle slid into a chair. She ought to join her friends in the dining room. She could pour a cup of coffee and have some dessert herself, and bask in the compliments on another meal well done. But she was too tired to move. Something that was supposed to be so enjoyable—their moment in the spotlight, sharing their love of food with a wider audience than just the people of Eureka—was turning into such a nightmare.

  One thing she loved about the restaurant was that, in the kitchen, she and Janelle were partners, in control of the food and of their lives. Faye Anne Reynolds had swooped in and now she was calling the shots and making Danielle second-guess everything, from her recipe for lamb to the presentation of a salad. She hated feeling this way, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Hard knocking rattled the back door. Danielle started, then stood and peered out the side window. Two men in dark suits and overcoats stood in the glow of the light over the door. One glanced around while the other shifted from foot to foot, impatient.

  The impatient man pounded the door again. Danielle hurried to open it, but only wide enough to peek out. “We’re closed,” she said.

  “Not to us, you aren’t,” the man said, and held up a gleaming silver and gold badge. “We’re with the IRS, and we’re looking for Faye Anne Reynolds.”

  ROCKY MOUNTAIN STUFFED TROUT

  Ingredients:

  4 trout, approximately 8 ounces when cleaned and heads

  removed

  3 slices bread, white or wheat

  8 slices bacon

  ½ cup chopped onion

  1 teaspoon thyme

  Directions:

  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

  Rinse trout and slice vertically so that the fish opens like a book. Set aside

  Pulse bread in a food processor or blender to make fine crumbs.

  Fry bacon until crisp, set aside to cool.

  Add chopped onion to bacon grease in pan and cook until onion is soft.

  In a large bowl, combine breadcrumbs, crumbled bacon, sautéed onion, and thyme.

  Divide the stuffing mixture evenly among the four fish.

  Arrange fish in a greased baking dish. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until fish flakes easily.

  Serve with lemon wedges.

  Chapter Six

  Smoking was not a habit of which Faye Anne was proud, and it was not something she allowed herself to indulge in very often. But in times of stress, a hit of nicotine was sometimes the only thing that helped her hang on. And tonight, anyway, her bad habit might just be her salvation. Well after dark, she was leaning out the window of her motel room, taking a long, satisfying drag on a cigarette from a pack she kept hidden in the bottom of her suitcase, when a dark sedan cruised slowly down Main.

  Faye Anne immediately snubbed out the cigarette and withdrew into the room. The car passed under a streetlight and the exempt license plates stood out like a giant warning sign. Government officials had exempt plates. IRS agents. IRS agents who wanted to seize all her assets, and maybe even throw her in jail for tax evasion.

  She carefully lowered the sash on the window, then dragged her suitcase from the closet. In went an armful of red dresses, blouses, skirts, and suits, along with half a dozen pairs of shoes. She took three hatboxes from the dresser and filled them with her wigs—each one custom made from real human hair and costing up to one thousand dollars. Jewelry, makeup, underthings, and miscellaneous possessions filled the gaps in the suitcase.

  She checked the window again. No sign of the car, but with only one motel in town, it wouldn’t be long before they located her. The Mustang was parked in front of the Last Dollar, where the wrecker driver had left it after winching it off the trailer. Jack had filmed Faye Anne stepping out of it, as if she’d just driven up. If the IRS decided to take the car, they’d have to call another wrecker first. There wouldn’t be much she could do to keep it from them, but maybe it would fool them into thinking she was at the restaurant.

  Suitcase in one hand, the straps of the hatboxes gathered in the other, she eased out the door of her room. The parking lot was silent—no sign of the feds. She had to get away from here, and fast. But where the heck could she go?

  Headlights blinded her as a vehicle turned into the lot. She shrank back, but the door to her room had already shut behind her, and with her hands full, she couldn’t get to her key. She was pinned like a bug in the glare of the light. A door slammed and heavy footsteps moved toward her. “Where do you think you’re going?” a familiar voice boomed.

  Faye Anne sagged against the door, half-sick with relief. “Jack, turn those lights off. You’re blinding me.”

  His shoes crunched on gravel and the lights went out, though the image still burned on her retinas. “Are you trying to run out on me?” he demanded.

  “Shhh. Keep your voice down.” She looked around, checking to make sure they were still alone. “I’m not running out on you, but I need to find somewhere else to stay.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  How to present this in the best light? She and Jack had worked together for a while now, but she wouldn’t say they were close. She wasn’t close to anyone she knew. If he was the by-the-book, law-and-order type, he might decide it was his duty to turn her over to the feds.

  On the other hand, turning her in would mean he was stranded in Eureka with no job, so maybe she could persuade him that helping her would be best for both of them. “I owe the IRS a lot of money in back taxes and they’ve threatened to send agents to seize my assets,” she said. “I think they might have found me.”

  Jack tilted his head, skeptical. “What assets do you have to seize?”

  “The house in Dallas—though that’s in foreclosure. The Mustang. My clothes, shoes, and wigs.”

  “They can’t take the clothes off your back, can they?”

  “I think they have to leave you the basics, but they can take things worth more than a certain amount of money. It was all in the memo they sent me.” A memo she had promptly burned, as if not having to look at the thing would stave off the inevitable.

  “The Mustang doesn’t even run,” Jack said.

  “It’s still worth something. And how am I going to do my show without my dresses and wigs?”

  “You still have your real hair. And a naked cooking show might be the next hot trend.”

  Great. Now he thought he was a comedian. “I need you to help me get out of here and lie low until I can film the show at the Last Dollar,” she said. “Once that’s gone to production, if the feds find me, it won’t matter as much. I’ll at least have one great episode to convince the sponsors that they should renew my contract, and with a new contract, I can negotiate a settlement with the government.”

  “I don’t want any part of this.” He started to back away.

  “Please.” She dropped the hatboxes and grabbed hold of him. “You have to help me.”

  “Why?”

  She thought about telling him it was his Christian duty to help another person in need, but she didn’t even know if he was a Christian. “If you don’t help me, I’ll tell them the video equipment belongs to me.”

  “You’d lie like that?”


  “A desperate woman will do a lot of things.” She didn’t really know if she could be that despicable, but she wasn’t above pretending she had that level of nastiness in her, if it persuaded Jack to help her.

  “Fine.” He grabbed up the hatboxes. “I’ll help. Where do you want me to take you?”

  She had no idea how to answer that question, but she needed something else from him first. “Don’t worry about that yet. First, I want you to drive over to the Last Dollar and look for a black sedan with exempt plates.”

  “Are those the feds?”

  “Yes. I want to know what they’re up to.”

  “If I’d wanted to be a spy, I’d have gone to work for a tabloid,” he muttered, but he set down the hatboxes and returned to the rental Jeep. The screech of his tires as he peeled out of the lot made Faye Anne want to cover her ears, but she settled for huddling in the darkness outside her hotel room door. She should have taken Lucille up on the offer of that hideous faux leopard coat. She’d be warm now, and anyone who knew her would never expect her to wear something so awful.

  She crouched over her heels and pulled her skirt down over her knees. This wasn’t exactly working out the way she wanted. What had gone wrong? She’d been so sure she’d planned carefully and thought of every angle. All she needed was one really positive show with great scenery, small-town charm, and delicious-sounding food. Her sponsors would see this and realize that Faye Anne Reynolds and What’s Cookin’? USA still had what it took to draw in the viewers. New contract in hand, she’d negotiate with the IRS and get her life back in order.

  All she needed was a little more time. Was that too much to ask?

  The Jeep returned to the parking lot at a more sedate pace than it had left. Jack climbed out and hurried over to her. “The car is parked in front of the Last Dollar and two guys in suits are inside, questioning everybody.”

  She stood. “That doesn’t give us much time. Someone is bound to send them here next.”

  “We have a little time,” he said. “I let the air out of one of their back tires.”