Toast Mortem

by Claudia Bishop

  There was a lot of Bismarck, and he obscured most of Clarissa’s upper torso. He blinked placidly and then, as Max trotted in behind Clarissa, extended a giant paw down to the dog and flexed his claws. Max gave the cat a quick glance and shot through the doors to the dining room.

  “Sorry,” Clarissa said.

  “He’s gone up to sleep with Jack,” Meg said. “But that’s some cat, all right.”

  “Is Bismarck usually an outdoor cat?” Quill asked. “If so, you might think about keeping him inside for a while. If Carol Ann’s on his case, we might have a problem.”

  “Carol Ann’s after that cat?” Meg shook her head. “That woman’s a menace. Quill’s right. You should think about keeping him inside.”

  “I usually do.”

  “Did he slip out the door when no one was looking?” Meg said sympathetically. “How did he get lost in the first place?”

  “Bernard,” Clarissa said briefly. “I told him I had a cat when he hired me, and he said”—she stuck out her lower lip and adopted a pretty good French accent—“But of course! Le chat domestique. What could be more French?’ And of course,” she continued with some bitterness, “that attitude lasted about a week.”

  “So he threw him outdoors deliberately?” Meg shook her head. “What an ass.”

  “Anyway,” Quill interrupted. “I’m really glad everything turned out okay and that you got Bismarck back.”

  “Me, too. Well.” Clarissa shifted the cat in her arms. “Thank you for everything. I’d better be off now.”

  “Off where?” Meg said bluntly.

  Clarissa bit her lower lip.

  “You guys are all housed at the academy, right? In that annex next to the big building?”

  “Yeah. We are.”

  “And do you really think LeVasque’s going to let you back in your apartment?” Meg turned to her sister. “You said LeVasque fired her.”

  “He sure did,” Quill said. “Does he make a habit of it? Or did he mean it?”

  “He meant it, all right,” Clarissa said. “We’ve butted heads often enough, but he’s one of those people whose word is his bond, if you know what I mean.”

  “I do,” Quill said sympathetically.

  Meg pressed on ruthlessly. “So you go back to the annex and what do you think the odds are that all your stuff will be out on the sidewalk?”

  “Pretty good,” Clarissa said with a laugh. “But he has to let me keep my stuff. In any event, it’s my problem, not yours. I can handle it.”

  Meg folded her arms across her chest. “What about your recipes?”

  Clarissa paled.

  “Right,” Meg said grimly. “What if he gets his slimy little hands on those?”

  “They’re on my laptop,” Clarissa said. “And they’re password protected.” Her eyes got suspiciously bright. “He wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare!”

  Meg looked at Quill. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Quill hadn’t a clue, but she nodded anyway. What she did know was that Meg didn’t trust anybody with the complete list of ingredients to five or six of her most famous dishes. Not even Quill herself. And Meg would stop just short of murder if anyone tried to steal her recipes.

  “Tell you what, Clarissa,” Meg said. “We’ll follow you over to the annex and see that everything’s okay. If not, well, we’ll take it from there.”

  Clarissa hesitated.

  Meg slung her purse over her shoulder with a purposeful air. “Is that your Ford Escort out in the parking lot? I thought so. We’ll take Quill’s Honda.” She eyed Bismarck, who was staring at her with a sort of benign malevolence. “Tell you what, though. You can take the cat.”

  6

  ~Socca~

  For six personnes

  ⅔ cup chickpea flour

  2 tablespoons LeVasque Extra Virgin Olive Oil*

  ½ teaspoon salt

  1 cup water

  Mix all ingredients and let stand one hour to allow the flour to absorb all. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Oil crepe pan, pour on the pancake mixture, and place in oven for five minutes. Remove, flip the pancake, and sprinkle olive oil attractively over the top. Replace pan in oven for five more minutes. Serve with salt and pepper.

  *LeVasque Extra Virgin Olive Oil is to be found in fine grocery stores everywhere.

  —From Brilliance in the Kitchen, B. LeVasque

  “You’re up to something,” Quill said, as she followed Clarissa’s battered Escort down the winding drive from the Inn to the village. “You want to clue me in now? Or let me sit here in a state of terror?”

  “Terror’s good,” Meg said. “I don’t know that you’ll approve, exactly.”

  “Try me.”

  “Does Clarissa look at all familiar?”

  “I saw her when we took the tour of the academy.”

  “Anywhere else?”

  “Meg, for Pete’s sake . . . darn!” Quill braked behind Clarissa at the only red light in town, which was at the intersection of Main and Hemlock Drive. She looked both ways up and down the street. At nine o’clock on a Monday night, there wasn’t much happening in Hemlock Falls. All of the wheelbarrows, lawnmowers, ladders, and buckets had been taken in from the sidewalk in front of Nickerson’s Hardware. There wasn’t much happening at the Croh Bar, either, since those villagers who did eat dinner out ate at six o’clock and went home to catch American Idol. The small businesses like Schmidt Realty and Casualty Insurance were closed until morning. The wrought-iron streetlights illuminated empty sidewalks, and the occasional raccoon foraging in the white painted planters. Almost all the buildings on Main Street were made of stone, which delighted tourists in the daytime, but gave the place the feel of a cemetery at night.

  Clarissa gunned through the red light and took off down the road.

  “Worried about the recipes, I think,” Meg said. “Can’t say as I blame her.”

  Quill went through the red light, too.

  The Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy lay past Peterson Park between the Hemlock Falls Resort and the edge of the village. The main building was easily accessible from the road, with a long circular drive. Small, single-lane roads led off from it at intervals, much like a European roundabout. The first lane led out of the parking lot, the second into the lot, and the third to the annex, where Bernard LeVasque housed his chefs and instructors.

  The annex was designed with the same white clapboard, green trim, and exquisitely polished pine decking as the larger building. Floodlights at the north and south ends of the roof illuminated the paths and lawns, without glaring directly into the apartment windows. The shrubs around the foundation were neatly trimmed and healthy. A large urn spilled white petunias over the front steps. Clarissa slammed to a halt at the portico that sheltered the entrance and killed the lights on the Escort.

  “Better park facing the road,” Meg said. “Just in case.”

  “Why do I feel guilty?” Quill said, as she followed Meg’s suggestion. “We aren’t breaking any laws.”

  “Not yet,” Meg said. “Might be a good idea to turn the headlights off, too.”

  Quill did that. Then they both sat for a moment. The engine ticked over. Somebody in one of the apartments had the TV on; Quill heard the familiar opening of the ten o’clock news.

  Clarissa got out of her car and went inside the annex. Meg poked Quill in the ribs. “You ready?”

  “Ready,” Quill said firmly. “Why are we whispering?”

  “Why not?”

  They found Clarissa in the foyer. It was spacious, perhaps twenty by twenty. A row of mailboxes was fixed on the south wall. Quill counted ten. So there must be ten apartments, five to the left and five to the right. Unless there was a laundry room.

  Quill pinched herself so that she’d stop obsessing about the layout of the building. A row of brass coat hooks with a shelf underneath for boots took up the wall opposite. The floor was carpeted in the kind of indoor-outdoor carpeting that always smelled funny to Quill; rubbery, with a chemi
cal undertone. The pattern was an inoffensive green, brown, and cream plaid.

  Clarissa was taking deep, regular breaths, which, when Quill thought about it, was a less painful way to de-stress yourself than pinching. She’d have to remember that.

  “I’m in number eight,” Clarissa said. “I didn’t get a corner unit. Those go to the chefs with more seniority. It’s just down here.”

  The carpeting kept their movements quiet, for which Quill was grateful.

  “Damn!” Clarissa said. “Will you look at what that turkey did!”

  Two four-by-four pine boards were nailed across the door to number eight.

  “Madame’s going to be royally pissed,” Clarissa muttered. “He nailed those boards right into the door frame.”

  “You’re locked out of your apartment and you’re worried about Mrs. LeVasque being pissed?” Meg said.

  Clarissa pried at the boards with her fingers. “It’s not even nails. That sucker went and got a drill and put screws in here.”

  “Crow bar,” Quill suggested. “I think there’s one in the trunk. From the time Marge and I had to get into what’s-hisname’s trailer,” she said to Meg.

  Meg shook her head. “That was before I used it to get into MacAvoy’s nudie bar. I didn’t put it back.”

  The door to number seven, which was directly across from Clarissa’s, opened up and a sturdy woman of about forty looked out into the hall. She had freckles, brown eyes, and hair that nature had intended to be red. Her hair had received some inexpert assistance in staying that way.

  “Clarissa!” she said. “Oh my God. Are you all right?!”

  “Hello, Raleigh. Raleigh, this is Quill. And her sister, Margaret Quilliam.”

  A smile lit her face. “The Margaret Quilliam? As in Shrimp Quilliam?”

  “And Pork Soup Quilliam,” Meg admitted in a self-deprecating way.

  Clarissa, Meg, and Raleigh all chuckled, as if at a well-known joke.

  “Pork soup?” Quill said. “I’ve never had your pork soup.”

  “You never had my pork soup because it’s a famous disaster.”

  “The Shrimp Quilliam, though!” Raleigh kissed her fingers in Gallic-style appreciation and then seemed to realize they weren’t there for a social call. She cast a worried look up and down the hallway. “Why don’t you come in? Just for a minute. He said he’d be back. He means to post a guard at the door all night. You don’t have much time.” She stepped back and let the others into the room.

  The apartment was quite pleasant, although the dark-veneered furniture gave it the feel of a hotel. The carpeting was beige, the walls were painted beige, and the curtains drawn over the double doors to the patio were beige, too. A reproduction of the Woodstock poster hung over the three-cushion couch and a ceramic pot of daisies sat on the bookshelf.

  “You’re Sarah Quilliam,” Raleigh said. “The artist?”

  Quill nodded. She couldn’t think of a famous art disaster to fend off the admiration, so she said awkwardly, “Your rooms are very nice.”

  “All these places are exactly the same. I haven’t had time to put any of my personal stuff in it.”

  “It looks very comfortable, and that’s the main thing.”

  “It’s not very comfortable at the moment,” Raleigh said frankly. “Not with the Maitre on the warpath. What in the name of God is going on, Clarissa?”

  “I got fired.”

  “Oh.” Raleigh sank down on the couch. “I suppose it was only a matter of time. Wow. Wow.” She looked up at them. “What are you going to do?”

  “First thing is to get my recipes back.” Clarissa crossed her arms, hugging herself, and began to pace up and down the room. “That little creep can’t hold on to them. They’re my personal property.”

  “The recipes are intellectual property,” Meg said, with the annoying air of someone who knows something you don’t. “And they’re incredibly valuable. I know someone who can get them back for you but . . .”

  “All LeVasque has to do is copy them,” Clarissa said. “And then I’m screwed for sure.”

  Quill poked her sister. “Who do you know that can get them back, Meg?”

  “A very good lawyer,” Meg said loftily.

  “And how do you know recipes are . . . what was the phrase? Intellectual property?”

  “As I said. A very good lawyer told me.”

  “It wouldn’t be this Justin Whosis. This associate Howie Murchison’s taken on, by any chance.”

  “It might.” Meg flashed her a grin. “And I have a feeling we’re going to need a really good . . .”

  “Ssst!” Raleigh jumped up from the couch in alarm. “Hear that?”

  The building was too solidly built to shake, but there was some sort of thumping and marching around in the hall. Then someone pounded on Raleigh’s door.

  “Into the bedroom!” Raleigh hissed. “I’ll tell him I don’t know a thing.”

  “Not the bedroom,” Meg said. “He knows we’re here. Our cars are out front. And, excuse me, Clarissa, that car of yours is so ratty that it can’t be mistaken for anyone else’s. We’ll go out that way.” She pointed dramatically at the patio doors.

  “Raleigh Brewster!Ouvrez!!”

  “What the hell?” Raleigh muttered.

  “He means open up,” Quill said.

  “Raah-leee?” shrieked a feminine voice.

  “And that’s Madame,” Clarissa said. “She’s worse than the Maitre.”

  Quill slung her purse over her shoulder purposefully. “And I’m with Meg. We should leave. Come on, Clarissa. We’ll meet you back at the Inn.”

  “Ouvrez! Maintenant! Tout de suite!”

  “I’ll be right there,” Raleigh called sweetly. “I just have to get some clothes on! I am totally naked, Madame.”

  There was a decided pause in the pounding at her door. Quill grabbed Clarissa’s elbow and gave Meg a hearty shove toward the patio. Raleigh slid the doors open, and the three of them tumbled out onto the lawn.

  “The Inn!” Quill said. “Ten minutes!”

  She and Meg made a dead run for the Honda and pulled out of the driveway just as LeVasque fell through the entrance door, tripped up, Quill surmised, by the profusely apologetic Raleigh. A big guy in a nondescript gray uniform made a halfhearted lunge at Clarissa, who neatly evaded him. She tumbled into the Escort. The security guard opened the passenger door, leaned forward, and then leaped back with a shout, nursing his left hand.

  “Bismarck strikes again,” Quill said. “Ha!”

  “Will you step on it, please?” Meg said. “I think that guy has a gun.” She pulled out her cell phone. Quill, concentrating on making the turn back onto Main Street at fifty miles an hour, spared her a glance.

  “What are you doing?!”

  “Hey!” Meg said into the cell. “Dina? Yeah. It’s me. No, I’m not mad. No, it’s okay. Really. I know how sorry you are. More to the point, I know how foggy you get when you’re studying your copepods. Look. You’ve got to give Davy a call and get him down here right away. Huh? Oh. The culinary academy. The annex. M. LeVasque’s in the process of breaking and entering into a private residence. Huh? Just do it. Please. He’s doing it right now!” She snapped the cell phone shut and stuck it back in her purse. “Where’s Clarissa?”

  Quill looked in the rearview mirror. The Escort’s headlights were distinctive, mainly because one was dimmer than the other. “Right behind us.”

  “That jerk isn’t after us, is he?”

  “Meg! It’s dark out there!”

  “Well, look for Mercedes headlights!”

  “I have no idea what Mercedes headlights look like.”

  “Put on your turn signal and wave Clarissa over. Where are we?” Meg peered out the window. “Right next to Peterson Park. Pull in next to the kiosk. Right here. Good.”

  The Escort grumbled to a stop behind them, and Clarissa poked her head out the driver’s window. “What’s up?”

  Quill stuck her head out the window, too. �
��My question, exactly.”

  “I created a distraction,” Meg said proudly.

  The squeal of the Hemlock Falls sheriff’s department cruiser siren made the evening hideous. Quill flinched as the black-and-white flashed by them, red lights whirling. “You certainly did. But why? You aren’t . . . oh,” she said in a voice of doom. “I see where you’re going.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Clarissa said.

  Quill gave her sister a look she knew to be pitiful. “I can’t, Meg. I’m a mother now.”

  “Pish-tosh,” Meg said cheerfully. “She probably has a key, and it’s her own apartment and we’ll just go in the patio doors, but it won’t work if we don’t get going right now.”

  Clarissa sat up so fast she bumped her head on the driver’sside door frame. “Wait. You mean I should go in the back way while the sheriff is out front arresting LeVasque?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” Meg said. “But if we don’t get on the stick . . .”

  “Jump in the back, ladies,” Clarissa said. “There’s a way through the back fields that will take us right to my back door.”

  “It’s not going to work,” Quill said, and she let Meg pull her into the backseat of the Escort. “And I’ll end up in jail again, and I will never forgive you, Meg, because if I’m not there when Jack wakes up in the morning, I personally will pitch a fit the likes which you’ve never seen!”

  “It’ll work,” Meg said confidently.

  And it did.

  “Told you,” Meg said smugly, some twenty minutes later. They were seated out on Quill’s balcony on the third floor of the Inn. Quill’s old rooms looked out on the herb garden. The kitchen was directly below her, if you didn’t count the floor in between, and they had a good view of the back parking lot. Clarissa clutched her laptop in one hand, and a glass of red wine in the other.

  “Fastest B and E we’ve ever done, sis. Give me a high five.” Meg leaned over the arm of her wicker chair and held her hand up. Quill slapped it with less than enthusiasm. “I swore off this stuff when I had Jack,” she said. “And I’m not going to get all tangled up in it again.”