The Whole Enchilada

by Diane Mott Davidson

  By mid-June, though, daytime temperatures were reaching the seventies. Brief showers punctuated the afternoons. Those same fishermen were happily pulling wriggling trout from the still-frigid waters. The risk takers had shed their blades and were riding their twelve-speeds too close to the tourist traffic.

  Once the boys decided on their bash, as they called it, Holly phoned me. She apologized, but said she was too busy with her work to help with the festivities. I told her that was fine, and not to worry about it.

  Marla, bless her, had insisted the celebration be held at her new house in the Meadowview area of Aspen Meadow Country Club. The boys wanted Tex-Mex food, and I’d volunteered to put together chips, guacamole, enchiladas . . . or whatever they wanted. Arch said he didn’t want me to do it all. I replied that other parents had offered to bring Mexican dishes. And I loved not having to clean and set up our house, or my nearby conference center, which was, thankfully, almost fully booked for the summer season.

  So here I was the day before the party: reminiscing, sashaying around our home kitchen, beating golden corn-bread batter, and making enchiladas. They weren’t the typical beef-bean type one had at restaurants, but my own variation of enchiladas suizas. They were a favorite of Arch’s. When I tried to explain to him that the dairy-rich dish had been developed in Mexico for the Sanborn coffee shops, he’d said, “Great, Mom. Thanks.” His pale cheeks flamed and his toast-brown eyebrows quirked. “And please don’t string up a piñata. I’m not five.”

  “Oh-kay.”

  No matter that my own son had no interest in piñatas or the provenance of dishes, no matter how problematic my regular clients occasionally were, I still loved cooking. With my business, I’d finally managed to turn my passion for feeding people into a moneymaker. Or at least, it was a moneymaker most of the time. I still had the occasional drunken host or crazed bridezilla, either of whom could cause a scene or have a full-fledged meltdown.

  Lucky for me, Tom packed a gun in his work with the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. Of course, he wouldn’t bring it out at one of my parties. Whenever anything threatened to go wrong, if Tom was there, he used that tone of voice. It scared the innocent and the guilty alike.

  I was happy that the boys’ party would give the fencing team and parents, plus friends, a chance to get together before summer began in earnest. And would Arch really kill me if we strung up a piñata? I asked Tom. Yes, Tom replied. He would.

  For the Tex-Mex celebration, my vegetarian assistant, Julian Teller, had set himself the task of making chile relleno tortas. In his midtwenties, Julian was compact, muscled, handsome, and perpetually grizzled-looking. Although I tried just to taste my own cooking to season it, when Julian tossed together cheeses, picante, and chiles, then poured a smooth mixture of eggs and cream on top, my mouth watered. Once the first batch of pies came out, I knew I would want to find a large spoon and dig in.

  That Thursday afternoon, as Julian waited for the first two tortas to finish baking, he tapped the toe of one of his high-top sneakers on the floor. He said, “I’m just going to check what else we have going on this weekend.” The third and fourth tortas sat on the counter, awaiting their time in the oven. I spooned the corn-bread batter into buttered pans and checked the timer for when they could go in. All the dishes would be made that day, to be reheated the next, at Marla’s.

  “In the computer,” I replied. Yes, we now had several laptops: one in the kitchen for my business, one for Tom in his basement office, and one in Arch’s room. Times did change, but I still wrote things down, as did Tom when he worked crime scenes. Any little thing could help you find a murderer, he always said. Specks of dropped ash. A forgotten print. Some detail that, if you didn’t record it, could let a killer get away.

  Julian clicked through screens to get to my calendar. He perused one, then zipped to the next. Kids’ tech skills always amazed me.

  “We have that church dinner Sunday night,” he said. He squinted as he read. “Plan Your Funeral? Really?”

  “Father Pete figured saying he was going to discuss death would drive people away.” We all loved Father Pete, the rotund priest at St. Luke’s, even when he was bent on talking about the hereafter.

  Julian regarded me quizzically. “Well, it did. Only a dozen people have signed up.”

  I shrugged. “We extended the reservation deadline to Saturday, and opened the dinner to the community at large. So blame him if it’s a flop.”

  Julian did not take his eyes off the computer. “I’m not going to blame Father Pete for anything. The man is obsessed with my fudge with sun-dried cherries.” He clicked to a new screen, then another. “Hold on. We have Arch and Drew’s party tomorrow night, then Saturday we’re off, then we have the church dinner the following night, and then another party, Monday night?”

  “Yup. Better still, for the rest of the summer, Goldilocks’ Catering is booked.”

  “The next few days will be packed.” Julian sounded dubious, but was interrupted by the doorbell. I asked him to get it. He trotted down the hall, peered through the eyehole, then raced back. “It’s Neil Unger.”

  There was a gentle knocking on our front door. Julian and I cringed.

  “Better let him in,” I whispered. The party we were doing Monday night was a surprise twenty-first-birthday celebration for Neil’s painfully shy, awkward daughter, Ophelia. At that moment, I really didn’t want to talk to Neil, or rather, listen to him. In his midfifties, barrel-chested, and charming, Neil had formed a group that was supposed to be working on bringing morals back into our culture. During the planning of Ophelia’s party, I’d nodded politely as Neil gave me his homily on The Decline of Everything. I’d kept my lips buttoned, which showed unusual restraint on my part, if I did say so myself.

  “I know you,” Neil said to Julian, who had opened the front door. “Boulder, right?” He said it like, You’re from hell, correct? When Julian murmured in the affirmative, Neil asked, “Could you please take my driver a snack? He didn’t have time for breakfast. I need to talk to Goldy.”

  “Yes, sir,” Julian said, waggling his eyebrows at me as he followed Neil down our hall. Julian unobtrusively slipped into the walk-in, pulled out some chocolate-filled croissants, nabbed a bottle of sparkling water, and disappeared.

  When Neil smiled at me, I swallowed. He had a handsome, chisel-cut face, with charisma to match. But I was in no mood to find out why he was in my kitchen. I caught a whiff of his spicy aftershave, then blinked at his perfect steel-gray hair, which looked as if it had been set in wide furrows that morning with a wide-tooth comb and an entire can of gel. He said gently, “I was hoping you could help me.”

  “Help you—?”

  He rubbed his dimpled chin. “I’m afraid my daughter knows about the party.”

  “Not from me,” I said.

  “Could you please check your computer?” His tone was plaintive as he waved a hand at the screen. “Maybe you’ve been hacked.”

  “I have not been hacked.”

  “How would you even know? Could you check? Please?”

  Neil belonged to the country club and was influential in Furman County politics. I couldn’t afford to alienate him. I clamped my mouth shut, tapped keys to run a virus check, and hoped I was doing it correctly.

  “I wanted to give Ophelia a book on fiscal responsibility,” Neil said as he ranged around the kitchen, nervously opening cabinets, then closing them. “But her stepmother vetoed that idea. So I bought her a gold bracelet. With charms.”

  “That sounds wonderful.” I squinted at the screen and cleared my throat.

  “My first wife died of cancer when Ophelia was very young.” He exhaled. “I just want the party to be a success.”

  “It will be. Please sit down.”

  Neil Unger continued moving around my kitchen. He was behind me, so I ostentatiously took my hands off the keyboard. He finally scraped back a chair. He said, “I think my daughter’s fiancé is a rhino.”

  “A rhino?�
�

  “Republican in name only. I haven’t said anything. I just worry for her.”

  “Um,” I said, still staring back at the screen. I prayed the virus scan was working its way through my files. “Do the fiancé’s politics really matter?”

  “I suppose not. Ophelia just seems so . . . unhappy.”

  I thought back to Arch’s years of misery. “I’m a big believer in counseling—”

  “The talking cure?” He groaned. “We tried that once. She refused to speak.”

  The scan ended, with no viruses detected. I turned around and looked at Neil Unger, who at that moment resembled a puppy who’d just been rescued from drowning. He seemed to want to talk to someone. But right then, I didn’t want to listen.

  Julian reentered the kitchen and took in our little tableau: short caterer looking sympathetic, political heavyweight looking pathetic. I said softly, “My computer hasn’t been hacked. If Ophelia knows about the party, she heard it from someone else.”

  Neil quirked his silver eyebrows, glared at the floor, and shook his head. He nodded at Julian and me, then left as quickly as he’d come in.

  “That guy’s a jackass,” Julian said as he slid the last two tortas into the preheated oven.

  “A jackass with a big checkbook and lots of friends.”

  “They’re the worst kind.” Julian set the timer. “Boss, we have a full schedule for the next few days. You can hire another caterer, give him or her the food you’ve ordered, and forget Unger. When I did a party for him, I had to listen to his political views. It’s not an experience I’m going to forget anytime soon.”

  “We’ll be fine.”

  “We have three parties in four days.” Julian paused. “Are you sure you know what we’re getting into?”

  I actually laughed.

  2

  When I woke the next morning, gray light suffused the bedroom curtains. Tom was still asleep, so I moved through my yoga routine, then tiptoed to the kitchen. A mountain breeze moved languidly through the pines and aspens surrounding our house. I opened the back door for Scout the cat and Jake the bloodhound, and reminded myself that today we were celebrating my only son’s seventeenth birthday. Okay, we were two months late. But, so what? I smiled and reflected that it was probably a good thing that I’d stayed up past midnight to frost the cake.

  Tom had recently said he wanted us to have a baby. I would welcome an addition to our household. But I worried: catering, not to mention being the mother of a teenager, often left me feeling old and tired.

  I pulled myself a double espresso, sat at the kitchen table, and stared into the dark liquid. I sighed. Among other things, I’d long been in denial about my intake of caffeine. Even though Marla, Holly, and I frequently referred to our knowledge of health and disease as coming from what we called Med Wives 101, I somehow never thought that knowledge pertained to me. My doctor had sternly ordered me to cut back. After my primal scream, I’d promised to switch to decaf on the third cup. It was the best I could do.

  I chugged the coffee, let Jake back in, and put him in the animal containment area. Scout had disappeared, as usual. When I was washing my hands, Julian pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen and took in my dour countenance.

  “Do I detect a negative vibe?” he asked mildly. To my surprise, he’d shaved. In a few hours, his heavy beard would begin to darken his lower cheeks and chin. But at least he’d made the effort. He wore a pale blue oxford-cloth shirt and khaki pants, purchased, he’d proudly told me, from Aspen Meadow’s secondhand store.

  “Negative vibe?” I echoed. “You’re not in the People’s Republic of Boulder anymore.”

  Actually, Julian had come back to live with us in late May, when the vegetarian bistro where he had been performing his culinary miracles had unceremoniously shut. Our first party would be the boys’ Mexican fiesta. Julian’s calming presence, brilliance with food, and efficient help made short work of the chores.

  His high-top sneakers squeaked across the floor as he hustled around me to the espresso machine, clattered a cup into place, and pressed buttons. As the stream spiraled downward, he hunted for the sugar bowl. Then he doused his espresso with so much of the sweet stuff that I had to close my eyes.

  My business line rang: Marla.

  “Some guy called me late last night,” she began without preamble. “I’d just supervised the lawn being mown and the delivery of a volleyball net and new lawn furniture—”

  “Marla, you didn’t have to do all that—”

  “I’m just trying to explain,” her raspy voice went on, “why I’d drunk three glasses of wine, okay, maybe four, had dinner, and gone to bed. The phone woke me up. This man said he needed directions to the party.”

  Julian cocked his chin, but I shook my head. “A fencing-team parent?”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Marla. “I was a little out of it, and actually, I thought he was a little out of it, like he’d lost his directions, or didn’t have access to the e-mailed invitation. So I told him how to get here, then asked for his name. He wanted to know if Holly Ingleby was going to be a guest at the party. I said yes and by this time I’d grabbed a pen. I asked him again who he was. But he hung up.”

  “Caller ID?”

  “Unavailable. Maybe he was an old boyfriend of hers.” I shook my head. Marla said rapidly, “The diggers for the horseshoe pitches just arrived. Sorry, Goldy. See you in a bit.”

  I hung up, groaned, and told Julian about an uninvited guest showing up that night.

  “Nothing we can do.” His voice wrapped around the door to the walk-in, where he’d disappeared to bring out the first pair of tortas. When he reemerged, he put down his load and gave me a look. “Tom will be there if there’s a problem. And I’m sure we have more than enough food.” As we placed more covered pans and bowls into cardboard boxes, I admitted to myself that Julian was right.

  “For a kid, you’re awfully wise.”

  “It’s from all that time being laid-back in Boulder.”

  “Please don’t say being laid-back to me.”

  We packed my van with the boxes of Mexican food, the birthday cake, the gifts for the boys, and a dozen gallons of dulce de leche ice cream, kept ultracold in coolers. I backed out of the driveway, and we took off for Marla’s house.

  At ten o’clock, the tourists hadn’t shown up in Aspen Meadow yet, so there were few cars on Main Street. The sun shone on the cloud of chartreuse pollen that shimmered between us and the Continental Divide. Cottonwood Creek, swollen with snowmelt, roared and splashed over the rocks submerged just below the surface. As we passed the falls and began skirting the lake, Julian craned his head to peer upward.

  He asked, “Don’t Holly and Drew live around here somewhere?”

  “Holly and Drew? No way. Holly has a big house in Aspen Meadow Country Club.”

  “Not anymore she doesn’t. Marla told me she recently moved over by the lake, near town. She and Drew are in one of those rentals where you don’t have to pay much if you keep it nice while it’s for sale.” Julian’s brow furrowed. “Come to think of it, I might not have been supposed to tell you that.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Um, I don’t think I have permission to—”

  “You might not have permission from Marla to tell me our friend Holly is renting near the lake?” How could Julian know more about where Holly lived than I did? “How could Marla possibly have told you and not me—”

  “Okay, here’s the deal, but you can’t tell anybody. Holly lost her house in the club.” Julian’s tone was matter-of-fact.

  “But,” I protested, “that’s simply not possible. She’s rich. And anyway, I assumed she bought that place in the country club with the profits from selling her Denver house. Plus, she should still have some money from George the Second.” I stopped talking and allowed my mind to grind through what, exactly, I knew about Holly’s financial situation. “Okay,” I said, as much to myself as to Julian, “when Holly
divorced George, she moved out of Edith’s mansion and bought a big place down below. But driving Drew back and forth to Elk Park Prep in the winter, she landed her Mercedes in ditches filled with snow more times than she could count. So she sold the Denver house, bought a place in the club and a four-wheel-drive Audi, and moved back up here. When did she lose the house?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person.”

  “I mean,” I responded, “her ex is wealthy. Yes, he was a skinflint with Holly, and so busy with his work he didn’t give her enough attention. So he wasn’t a super husband. But I don’t think he’d let her lose the country-club house where she and his son were living.” I shook my head. Did I think George would do that?

  “Well,” Julian replied, “I don’t know if George was involved in it. According to Marla, Holly refinanced the place in the club. Then she couldn’t make her payments. She tried to do a short sale, with no luck. The bank foreclosed.”

  “How do you know so much about Holly?”

  “Watch where you’re driving, boss.” Julian’s revelations had so disconcerted me that I’d drifted into the wrong lane. I corrected the van and glanced over in time to see a grin pleat Julian’s cheek. He said, “Marla told me about Holly’s situation because I asked. And anyway, I care about my very first food client.”

  “Your first client? What in the world are you talking about?”

  “I met Holly when I got to Elk Park Prep,” he said simply. “I was a boarding student, remember? I was fifteen and on the swim team.”

  “You were at EPP when you were fifteen? I thought you arrived later.”

  “Nope. I was a scholarship student beginning at age fifteen. Anyway, I’d get hungry after practice, before dinner was served to the boarding students. Since I was a vegetarian, I got permission to use the kitchen to make my own meals. One time, when Drew was, oh, nine or so, he suddenly appeared beside me, said he’d smelled something yummy, and what was I doing? He said his mother was late picking him up, and asked if he could have a plate of whatever I was fixing. So I gave him a bowl of vegetarian chili. He raved about it to Holly. She came into the kitchen the next day, all breathless, saying her husband, George, was a vegetarian, too. She hated having to prepare food for him on Edith’s cook’s one night off. So she paid me, each week, to make a vegetarian dinner for the four of them. Which I did, until the Inglebys got divorced and I moved in with the Farquhars.”