Three Blonde Mice

by Jane Heller

  “It means that one of our classmates has it in for the chef,” I said. “And if we don’t act fast, Whitley’s Bounty Fest on Saturday will be a crime scene.”

  She shuddered, went back to her chair, and curled her feet under her, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I can’t imagine which of them would do a thing like that. Can either of you? Should I call Bill?”

  “Nobody has a tummy ache, so we don’t need a gastroenterologist,” Jackie snapped, and immediately apologized. Pat said dumb things occasionally, but getting angry with her was like getting angry at cotton candy.

  “We need to take the letter to the police,” I said. “Like now.”

  “But the letter says not to,” Pat pointed out. “Maybe it wouldn’t be in the chef’s best interests to go to anybody.”

  “It’s in the chef’s best interests to live past Saturday,” I said.

  15

  We decided to go to Chef Hill first and let him make the judgment whether or not to show the letter to the cops. It was nearly ten o’clock, a little late for paying social calls on famous chefs, but after I ran back to my cottage to change out of my bathrobe, the three of us went to the front desk and asked the clerk for Chef Hill’s cottage number.

  “I’m sorry,” said the clerk, who was chinless and had prominent veins on his nose. “I can’t give out the private information of our artisans in residence.”

  “We’re not stalkers or anything.” I laughed as if the notion were unthinkable. And then I went right for the bullshit. “His wife is a dear friend of ours, and she asked us to look in on him tonight. She’s worried about his health. She said he’s been working too hard and not sleeping well.”

  “If you’re such dear friends with Mrs. Hill, why didn’t she give you the number of his cottage?” said the clerk.

  “She forgot,” said Jackie, who made the clerk flinch from her alcohol breath. “And now she’s out of cell phone range. We just tried to call her. We tried to call Chef Hill too, but he’s not picking up.”

  “Again, I’m afraid I can’t help,” he said, turning away from us to focus entirely on the hotel computer screen.

  “My husband’s a doctor in Manhattan,” said Pat. “His name is William Kovecky and he’s on Good Morning America. He’s Chef Hill’s personal physician. I’m not at liberty to discuss the chef’s condition with you because of the HIPPA law, but my husband felt it was imperative that we see him this evening. This is a potential medical emergency, sir.”

  Wow. Pat was on fire. I’d never seen her so pushy, never mind articulate. The Bailey’s Irish Cream must have emboldened her.

  When the clerk appeared to be considering his options, she whipped out her driver’s license for identification and piped up with, “Google him if you don’t believe me: Dr. William Kovecky. He’ll be right there on the GMA website. He just did a story for them on Ebola and its gastroenterological symptoms. Did you know that Chef Hill traveled to Africa recently?”

  The clerk blanched. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “No, Chef Hill doesn’t have Ebola,” said Pat as Jackie and I stood back and watched her work, marveling at her chutzpah. “My husband thinks he may have contracted another virus though.”

  “What she’s saying is that you really don’t want a famous chef getting sick at your hotel for lack of proper care,” I said. “Got it, buddy?”

  “Yes, yes, fine, all right,” said the clerk, who pulled up the cottage number, wrote it down on a Whitley business card, and handed it to Pat. “Please give Chef Hill my best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

  I herded my friends out of the lobby—they were unsteady on their feet, to put it mildly—and we made our way to Chef Hill’s cottage, which was three times the size of any of ours. When we knocked on the door, we expected one of the minions to answer, but it was Jason himself who greeted us, wearing his fluffy white Whitley robe. With his shaved head and goatee, tattooed neck, and stocky body, he looked like a prizefighter about to get into the ring.

  “I didn’t know Girl Scouts went door to door at this time of night,” he said.

  “We’re in your cooking class,” I said. “I’m Elaine, the one who dropped her galette dough on the floor.”

  “I remember,” he said. “Vaguely.”

  Jackie and Pat introduced themselves, and we all just stood there for a beat, the way you would if you were up close and personal with a celebrity in his bathrobe. “We hate to bother you, Chef,” I said finally, “but we came across something that needs your immediate attention.”

  “What kind of something?” he asked with a smirk, as if he thought we were groupies jonesing for an autograph.

  “A death threat,” said Jackie, not bothering to sugarcoat it. She was still slurring her words, and I worried that he wouldn’t take her seriously, take any of us seriously. “I think we should come in, don’t you?”

  The interior of his cottage was a showplace—beamed ceilinged great room, adjoining kitchen and dining room, lovely fixtures and artwork. Only the best for the artisan in residence.

  He didn’t invite us to sit, so we lingered in his entryway, where I handed him the letter. “It was put in my tote bag by mistake at the Welcome Happy Hour,” I said. “I only got around to reading it tonight.”

  The three of us watched him read the letter. He was one of those people who moved his lips while he read to himself. When he was finished, he gave the letter back to me as if it were a promotional circular he couldn’t wait to throw into the recycling bin.

  “Okay, so this is about one of two things,” he said. “One: you wrote this because it gave you an excuse to come and see me. I get that you’ve been partying and maybe hoping for more one-on-one time with me. Happens a lot.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s number two?” I said, not appreciating his attitude. We had come to save his life, and he was treating us like bimbos.

  “Two is some nut job guest at the hotel wrote this,” he said. “Goes with the territory when you’re famous. You wouldn’t believe the mail I get accusing me of the most God-awful shit. They threaten to cut off my balls. They say they’re gonna kidnap my wife and kids. They compare me to Hitler because I tell people to eat healthy. You grow a thick skin after a while and learn not to give it any oxygen.”

  “But what if the person who wrote this means it?” said Jackie.

  He patted her on the head like you would a good doggie. “I appreciate the thought, but I’m used to this stuff, honest. I just roll with it.”

  “So you’re not even hiring extra security for Saturday?” I said. “A couple of bodyguards wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  “Nah.” He waved me off. “If I put extra security guards on my payroll every time some wacko said something stupid about me, I’d be broke by now.”

  He moved us toward the door like a cowboy steering cattle. We protested, tried again to get through to him, but before we knew it we were on his porch in the fetid summer night’s air, back to square one.

  “Well, that went well,” said Jackie. “He totally fucking blew us off.”

  “What should we do?” said Pat after a loud yawn. As I’ve said, she wasn’t much of a drinker, so she was probably minutes away from passing out.

  “We could try Rebecca,” I said. “I know where her cottage is. I saw her leaving one morning.”

  Jackie and Pat were on board, so we hurried—well, I hurried while they lagged—over to see Whitley’s executive director. Surely she would put a stop to any bad behavior.

  I knocked on her door. No answer. We gave it a minute and tried again. And then I figured what the hell, and turned the doorknob, and we were in. I remembered what Rebecca had told us at the Happy Hour Welcome Party—that Whitley was such a safe, secure environment that some of the staff didn’t use their keys and simply left their doors unlocked. I’d snickered when she’d said that, because my apartment in the city had three Medeco locks and a deadbolt and they never went unused.

  “Now what?” Pat wh
ispered as we crept into the cottage, which was more of a full-sized cabin where someone would actually live on a full-time basis.

  “It’s pitch dark in here,” said Jackie. “Rebecca must have gone out.”

  We stood in her entrance hall, trying to get our bearings. “Or she could be asleep,” I said.

  “Right. It’s late, and she probably gets up with the chickens,” said Jackie.

  “Wait.” I put my fingers to my lips to silence my friends. “I think I heard something.”

  “You always think you hear something,” Jackie said.

  The dreaded Eric, my ex-husband, used to say I could hear a bird shit in Estonia, and he was right. My hearing was freakishly good. “No, it was sort of a growl. Maybe Rebecca has a pet.”

  I tiptoed further into the cottage, and when I rounded the corner, into the living room, I stopped in my tracks. Rebecca, it turned out, had not gone out. She wasn’t asleep either, nor did she have a pet. She was straddling a naked, bearded man, riding him as if he were one of those mechanical bulls, and she was wearing nothing but a black leather dog collar. Pat let an “Oh!” escape her mouth, and Rebecca looked up to find us gaping at her.

  “Who are you and what are you doing in my cottage?” she shrieked, climbing off the man, grabbing a nearby rag rug and wrapping herself in it.

  I explained that we were Cultivate Our Bounty guests, and apologized profusely for interrupting.

  “Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?” she demanded. She looked mortified.

  Her companion, on the other hand, wasn’t the least bit uncomfortable. He waved to us from the floor, his privates in full view. “Hey there,” he said. “The name’s Wes.”

  “You’re the farmer who taught me how to milk Missy,” I said, recognizing his name and his voice and trying not to look anywhere but above his head.

  “You bet,” he said in that laconic way he had. It occurred to me that he might very well be a good lover, since he was so familiar with Missy’s anatomy. Females were females, when you got right down to it.

  “Please don’t mention this to anyone,” Rebecca begged us. “Wes’s wife is our lovely bookkeeper at Whitley. I wouldn’t want to hurt her, you understand?”

  “But you’re sleeping with her husband,” I said, not a fan of cheaters, given my histories with my cheating ex and cheating father. “You’re already hurting her.”

  “Elaine, this probably isn’t the time for a lecture,” said Jackie. “Shouldn’t we tell Rebecca the reason we came?”

  “Right.” I pulled out the letter and started to explain to a woman whose sexcapades had just been cut short about the possible threat to Chef Hill.

  “What you’re insinuating is impossible,” said Rebecca, shuffling toward the front door, her movements hampered by the rag rug she had wound so tightly around her naked body that it caused her to take tiny Geisha steps. “Whitley Farm has an impeccable reputation, and there’s never been a scintilla of scandal here.”

  I almost laughed. No scandal, except that the agritourism director was playing Churn the Butter with the married milker-in-chief. “Why don’t we discuss this in your office first thing tomorrow morning?” I suggested.

  “There’s nothing to discuss,” she insisted. “Our guests revere the artisans in residence, including Chef Hill.”

  “One of them doesn’t, according to this letter,” I said, waving it at her.

  She stared at me, incredulous. “Have you not noticed that Whitley is an idyllic place, a sanctuary where people come to experience the land and its bounty? The philosophy here has to do with harvesting, growing, and sustaining, not killing.”

  “Some sanctuary,” Jackie muttered. “You need a reality check, honey.”

  Rebecca did not respond, except to close the door in our faces and then turn off the outside light, leaving us in the dark.

  “Why was she wearing a dog collar?” asked Pat, feeling around for me so she wouldn’t topple over.

  “She was dominating,” Jackie said. “Or maybe he was dominating. I don’t really know.”

  “Let’s table that conversation for now,” I said. “We need to go to the police. No way around it.”

  Jackie belched, polluting the air with her tequila breath, and said, “You drive, Elaine. Pat and I need to rest our eyes.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the Western District of the Connecticut State Police Station. There were two troopers there and they could have made any police department’s Best Dressed List. Their shirts were light gray, with royal blue epaulets that matched the royal blue strip down the legs of their navy pants. Their badges were gold, as were their various patches and pins—very four-star general—but it was their hats I liked the most. They were gray Stetsons of the type worn by cowboys, Royal Canadian Mounties, and actors on the old TV show F Troop.

  “How can we help you, ladies?” asked the one who had introduced himself as Trooper Conway. He had an impressively deep dimple in his right cheek, or perhaps it was an old bullet wound.

  “We’d like to report a murder,” said Jackie.

  “A murder that hasn’t happened yet,” Pat added.

  “It’s happening on Saturday,” said Jackie. “At Whitley Farm. We’re agritourists there.”

  “We’re cultivating our bounty,” said Pat. “We milked a cow.”

  I had decided to let my friends do the talking, since they were always accusing me of trying to control every situation. But from the look on Trooper Conway’s face I could see I made a mistake. Pat’s brilliance with the hotel desk clerk had given way to fatigue, and Jackie was still in alcohol-ville.

  “Have you ladies been drinking?” he asked.

  Jackie started to get defensive, but I shushed her. You don’t get smart-alecky with a guy who’s carrying a semi-automatic pistol, not to mention a baton and pepper spray. “Just a couple of after-dinner drinks,” she said, neglecting to mention the numerous glasses of wine she’d consumed first.

  “I only had two chocolate milks,” said Pat. “Well, it tasted like chocolate milk.”

  “I’ll need to see your driver’s licenses, all three of you,” said Trooper Conway.

  We produced them and waited while the other trooper ran a check on them or whatever it is police officers do with driver’s licenses. I got a traffic ticket once, back when I was young and carefree (okay, I was never carefree), and after staring at my license mug shot for what seemed like five minutes the officer handed it back to me and said, “You looked better with bangs.” Everyone’s a critic.

  “I’ll need breathalyzer tests,” said Trooper Conway after it was determined that none of us were convicted felons or on Homeland Security’s Terrorist Watch List. “Step over here, please.”

  “Over here” was in the corner of the small barracks, where the officer administered the tests. Basically he told us to take a deep, deep breath and then blow into the little contraption until we couldn’t blow anymore. The gizmo calculated the readings and—surprise—Jackie and Pat were over the legal limit.

  “You’re at .131,” he said to Pat. “Point zero-eight is the legal limit.”

  Jackie was at .151.

  “They weren’t driving. I was,” I said, “so since my test was clean, there’s no problem, right?”

  “Right,” said Trooper Conway, “but all that murder stuff they were talking about is just the alcohol—nothing I can take seriously.”

  I gave him the letter addressed to “Pudding” and hoped it would change his mind. “There’s a plot to kill Chef Hill on Saturday,” I said. “That’s pretty serious, isn’t it?”

  He gave it back to me after only a cursory reading. “You city people sure are interesting,” he said with an amused shrug. “Which one of you wrote this while you were at the bar having yourselves a good time?”

  “We didn’t write it!” Jackie protested. “Elaine found it in her tote bag!”

  “And I found a million bucks in my wallet,” he said. “Look, we’ve had a lot of experience with
the guests at Whitley. You people pay big bucks to come to the boonies so you can pretend to be farmers, and you get bored within twenty-four hours, which leads to all sorts of fun and games. If you ask me, you should go to a casino instead.”

  “You think we’re gamblers?” said Pat, which was not the point.

  “What I think is you ladies should go back to the hotel and sleep it off,” he said. “It’ll be all better in the morning.”

  He opened the front door and motioned for us to make our exit. Yes, we tried again and again to be heard, but even after I made a rather persuasive case for how I’d discovered the letter and how celebrity chefs got on a lot of people’s nerves these days, we were sent on our way.

  “We’ll have to figure all this out by ourselves,” I said as I drove the three of us back to Whitley. “So you two need to sober up. No more nightcaps at the bar. We need to solve this before it’s too late. Okay?”

  No answer. Nothing. As soon as I stopped at a light, I glanced over at Jackie in the passenger seat and at Pat in the back. They were both fast asleep, their mouths hanging open wide enough to catch flies, as my mother would say.

  Day Four:

  Thursday, July 18

  16

  Jackie appeared at my cottage door at 7:00 a.m. Her short, spiky hair seemed to have wilted, and her complexion, usually so ruddy and vivid, was sallow, accentuated by the dark circles under her eyes. If she’d slept at all after I dropped her and Pat off in Whitley’s parking lot, it wasn’t a restful sleep by the look of her.

  Not that I’d logged in more than a couple of hours myself. My brain was flooded with questions about my fellow agritourists and their possible motives for wanting Chef Hill dead. My gut was roiling from nerves, and I’d spent most of the night popping Pepcids.

  I motioned Jackie inside and crawled back into bed while she paced back and forth in front of me, back and forth, without saying a word.

  “You’re making me dizzy,” I said.

  She stopped pacing. “Just so you know, I’m embarrassed about last night.”