Death Dines Out

by Claudia Bishop

  "Fried food!" shrieked the salad chef. "Fast fried food?"

  "I will not give up my kitchen to such. Me? Non!" roared Chef Jean Paul. "I will kill this son of a sea cock. This bastard. This canaille."

  "You don't think. Birdie and Bea, that we could find another building for everyone?" Quill said. "I mean, it's profitable, surely?" She raised her eyebrows at Linda Longstreet.

  "Profitable," said Linda. "Well." She twisted a piece of tissue her hands and bit her lip. "On a month-to-month basis it's profitable, yes. But overall..."

  "What does that mean?" Quill asked in a nonconfrontational way.

  Birdie's eye sharpened. "Yes, Linda. Tell us now, if you please. When we convene every month, we look at cash flow, receivables, and that sort of thing. But come to think if it, we haven't seen a balance sheet all year - have we, Bea?"

  "No, we haven't, Birdie. Tell us, dear - just what is the outstanding debt?"

  Linda told them. There was a glum silence.

  "It was pledged against the equity in the building, of course," said Linda.

  Ernst gave a snort.

  "But the Institute doesn't own the building, does it?" asked Quill. "I'm a little confused here."

  "The building was mortgaged through Florida First," said Linda.

  "Verger's bank," said Bea, in an aside to Quill. "And Florida First pledged the loans the Institute it- self took out against the equity in the building."

  "Pledged?" Quill frowned. "You mean that the loan to your institute was secured against the equity in the building?"

  "No. I'm afraid not. There was an assumption that if we needed money, there'd be enough equity to cover our debt, so it was really just a handshake deal." She turned to the stunned onlookers. "The man at the bank said it would be fine. And not to worry about it."

  "But is that legal?" Quill asked. She looked at Ernst. His face was an impassive mask. After a moment he said, "Yes. It's legal."

  "How can undisclosed debt be legal?" Quill demanded.

  Ernst smiled. "Oh, I think you'll find it's disclosed, all right. Nobody's tried to hide anything. When we bought the building, there were no legal liabilities attached - other than the balance of the mortgage, which Taylor Inc. paid off, of course."

  "So we're all out of a job?" Linda asked steadily. "Is that what this means?"

  "Verger would like you all to stay on until the end of the week."

  "Not me," Linda said bitterly. "He fired me right now." To everyone's intense discomfort, Linda burst into tears.

  "Everyone else," Ernst continued, "is to stay on. We have two famous guests with us-Chef Quilliam and her sister, who's a well-known artist-and we wouldn't want any bad publicity to interfere with events going on this week. Isn't that right, Miss Quilliam?"

  "She," Chef Jean Paul blurted, red-faced, "she is interested only in the saving of Chef Meg. For the star, you understand. I say pah! and pah! again to this." He spat impressively on the floor.

  "This means you'll stay the week?" Ernst said.

  "For what? For what do I stay this week? I walk out on this week."

  "For a decent severance package. I can talk Verger into that much."

  Chef Jean Paul spat on the floor once more, then said, "I demand a month, me. And for my friends, two weeks."

  "Hey!" Chef Brian leaped to his feet. "How come you get a month's worth of pay and we get two weeks?"

  "Because I am the master, you scum!" Ernst spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. "Tell you what, guys. Come up here and we'll talk it over."

  The six chefs clustered around Ernst like cabbage flies on new peas.

  Quill was shaken. "I wish," she murmured to Bea, "I'd never heard of Tiffany Taylor, that'd I'd never accepted this project, that I'd never heard of Palm Beach, and that Florida didn't exist."

  Bea patted her hand in a sympathetic way and said briskly, "Well dear, you did, and it does. What are you going to do now?"

  "Find Meg, I suppose, and carry on."

  "Good girl." She raised her voice. "Ernst!"

  "Yes, Bea."

  "You can tell Verger from me that this move may be a profitable one, but it is heartless, heartless. These are my friends - Chef Jean Paul, Chef Brian, Linda, and the rest. Taylor has summarily put them out of a job and like many such tactics in the business world, I disapprove. I highly disapprove."

  Impulsively Quill applauded.

  Linda Longstreet looked at Bea with damp eyes. "Does this mean that you and Mrs. Goldwyn and Mrs. McIntyre will help us find a new building?"

  "I doubt it, Ms. Longstreet. We'd do far better to take that investment and buy a few more shares of Taylor Incorporated. Ernst? Will you see to that? Quill? You look..." She paused and regarded Quill quizzically. "A little dismayed. This is how you keep wealth, my dear. By hanging tough. Sentiment should never enter into it, or so my dearest Charles always told me. Birdie!"

  "Yes, Bea."

  She nodded majestically. "We are going in search of Chef Meg. I have always wanted to learn how to jug a hare."

  -7-

  "This is rabbit," meg said to the assembled students, "is not a rabbit but an American hare, which means that the meat is all white. As you can see, it weighs around... " She stopped, pursed her lips, and placed the soft limp body on the scale. "Eleven pounds, two ounces." She looked up sternly. She was wearing her toque and her dress-whites trousers and tunic. There were seven students standing around the butcher block table in the center of the chacuterie kitchen. They were all wearing white jackets and the starched white berets that distinguished the cooking students from the chefs. One of them stood apart from the others: a tall, slim woman with a calm, beautiful face. Her hair was a silvery gray and she was graceful, attentive, quiet. Quill was reminded of the scene from Galsworthy's Indian Summer of a Forsyte, with the beautiful Irene coming across the grass: the spirit of beauty in a twentieth century kitchen in Palm Beach. Two things to paint here, then: the sky over the sea before a hurricane and Cressida Houghton. Tiffany Taylor stood closest to her, a neon light next to a glowing candle. There were lines around Tiffany's mouth that Quill hadn't noticed before.

  "Test the age of the hare by turning the claws sideways," Meg said, demonstrating. "The claws should not crack. If they do, the hare is old. The ears should be soft, bend easily, and the animal itself should have a short body and long legs." She set the hare aside and reached to the overhead beam, where four animals hung pathetically by their hind legs. "These hares have been hanging for twenty-four hours. They can hang for as long as four days, but if the hind legs are not stiff when you take them down, throw the animal out. You're risking tularemia. Sometimes called rabbit fever, this is a bacterially based flu."

  "My goodness," said Bea. "That poor bunny looks so innocent, Birdie."

  "It's a hare, Bea, not a bunny." Birdie intercepted a glare from Meg. "Now hush."

  "You know a chef by her knives," Meg said. She held up a long, thin boning knife, its edge honed to a dangerous sharpness. "We will prepare this hare for marinating." She drew on a pair of rubber gloves and began to dress the hare. The lights flickered off and then on again. Meg held the knife up for a moment, cursed fluently, then set to, once it appeared the power was going to remain on. She sliced the skin of the front and hind legs away from the joint; tied the hind feet together with kitchen string and peeled the skin off the hind legs, body, and forelegs. "Just like turning a glove inside out," she said cheerfully.

  Quill turned away to inspect the kitchen; Meg's next step was to sever the head, remove the intestines, and wash the carcass with vinegar water. One of the women standing at the table looked a little green, but she steadied herself and managed to look attentive as Meg carefully sliced around the heart and the liver.

  Cressida Houghton, seeming to glide rather than walk, came to Quill as she was looking critically at a sixty-gallon stock pot. "I'm Cressida Houghton," she said, extending a slender hand.

  Quill couldn't think of a thing to say Of course you are!
Would seem too hearty. Oh really? Seemed impertinent. "I'm Sarah Quilliam."

  "I have two of your iris sketches. They're wonderful."

  Quill blushed, unable to respond to praise of her work, as usual.

  "The essentials of a marinade," Meg said loudly, "are that of any basic stock: celery, carrots, onions, bay leaf, parsley, vinegar, and water. The choice of your curing agent - vinegar - is critical to the success of the dish."

  "Your sister... marvelous," said Cressida Houghton. "I must get back. But the boys and I would love it if you would come out to my house for dinner this evening. Say at seven-thirty for drinks? Then dinner? And perhaps a few hands of bridge?"

  White Queen to King Four? Quill sighed. This game was getting murkier and murkier. "We'd love to," she said. "Thanks."

  "It's the first place off your left as you come over our little bridge into Hobe Sound. Number four."

  She drifted back to the butcher block table. Everyone in Cressida's orbit - except, Quill noted with a sudden stab of fondness, Meg herself - was so aware of her presence that their attention was almost tangible. Tiffany, with a discontented pout, signaled to Quill with one finger. Quill held up a hand in response and slipped out the door. She would wait until Meg's class was over to let Tiffany know how things stood.

  With more than half an hour until Meg's class broke for lunch, Quill was somewhat at loose ends. There wasn't time enough to take the Mercedes out for a little run (the speedometer went to two-twenty, and Quill had been dying to find a quiet road and discovered how the car handled at high speeds), and it was too much time to sit and do nothing, unless she had something to read. She recalled that the institute had a small library of cookbooks next to the administrative offices, and she decided to look up old recipes for potted rabbit. Meg was always interested in new ingredients for her marinades - although the one with which she hoped to earn the third star seemed unsurpassable to Quill. Even she didn't know the basic curing ingredient, but she had a hunch it was very old brandy, from a comment John had made about the liquor bills in the past few months.

  The library was on the ground floor of the Institute, past what Linda Longstreet had called the Food Gallery. Quill went down the stairs and through the archway to this area and stopped in mild astonishment. The room was square and lined with glass display cases, much like the ones at the British Museum in London. The cases were filled with food art. One shelf was devoted to creations from spun sugar-cottages, flowers, even zoo animals. The case next to that was hung with brush paintings out of cocoa. Several large montages of seashells and driftwood were on the walls unoccupied by display cases. Quill put her hand out and touched one: spun sugar, dyed with food coloring and air-hardened. The work was clearly that of students. Quill viewed all this with bemusement. She had to bring Myles to see it. The displays were the sort of thing you had to see yourself. Like Snake World and Reptile Kingdom along the Florida Turnpike. She passed up and down in front of the exhibits for some time.

  "See that," said a voice from behind the wall. "You can see that, can't you?" In a fit of manners, Quill was about to turn away when she heard, "Verger. You heard me. I think he's on to the whole thing. Why else would he have bought this place? He could have put up a chicken palace six times larger than this at half the cost."

  Linda Longstreet. No longer in tears, but sounding very angry.

  Quill flattened herself against the wall adjacent to the door to the administrative office. Linda's office was on the other side of the wall containing the sugared seashell exhibit. Quill peered around the archway to the corridor. Linda's office door was closed. From this position, Quill couldn't hear a thing. She walked softly back to the point where she'd first heard Linda's voice. By some trick of construction (or, Quill thought, misconstruction) her voice was clearer than ever. She was weeping. There was a soft murmur of a reply, then Linda sobbed, "I'd like to kill him. Just kill him! And you would, too, I know it!" The second voice again, in cadences of agreement. And behind Quill, in the hall leading to the stairs, the shuffling of feet. Meg's class must be out. Quill stepped back in apparent contemplation of a particularly vibrantly colored blue bird, then turned and smiled as the students from Meg's class in potted hare came flooding through the gallery on the way to Le Nozze. After the morning session, Meg was scheduled to create a working lunch for the students in the Le Nozze kitchens. They clattered through the hallway past Linda's door. Quill followed them; as she passed Linda's office the door opened, and Dr. Bob Bittern, head of Excelsior, came into the hall. He saw Quill, stopped, and folded his hands reprovingly. "Ms. Quilliam. May I speak to you a moment?"

  Quill felt herself blush. He couldn't have known she was eavesdropping. He took her arm and drew her back through the gallery.

  "I would like to ask you to speak to Mr. Taylor on behalf of Ms. Longstreet."

  "Me?"

  "She's in quite a bad state. Quite." Quill wondered if this was a psychiatric diagnosis: "quite a bad state."

  "She is in desperate need of employment?" His voice rose at the end of the sentence, as though he were asking a question. "And if she is not reassured that she has a place in this new business, I cannot answer for what she may do next. She is a qualified accountant, you know."

  The lights in the gallery flickered off. For a moment, Quill and Dr. Bittern were in almost total darkness. Except for the gleam of his white hair, Quill couldn't see a thing. She imagined Meg's curses floating through the air, the refrigerated units losing power. She didn't like Verger Taylor's business methods, but she had to agree that Linda was not a particularly efficient manager. "There isn't a thing I can do, Dr. Bittern. And I'd like to find my way out to the light. I need to speak to my sister."

  "Come this way." His hand was soft on her bare arm. He drew her through the hall and out into the sunlit expanse of the area next to the stairs. The darkness behind them winked into light. "There we are. Light is restored. Now it would be quite neat, would it not, if you could restore some light to Ms. Longstreet."

  "I'd love to help," Quill said, "but I honestly don't know what I could do. I'm not even sure how I've gotten into this position..." She trailed off. He looked at her attentively and didn't respond. It was an extremely effective tactic - before she realized it, Quill blurted, "I don't even want to be here. I don't know why Verger Taylor asked me to tell all those people they were going to lose their jobs. I mean, he came in and did it himself, anyway, didn't he? So it's clear he doesn't think any better of me than he does anyone else. I don't have any influence with him at all, really. I don't want to have any influence. I'm very, very sorry for Linda..."

  "She is in a desperate way," he repeated.

  "Surely there must be some other accounting jobs she can find, Dr. Bittern. Perhaps if we called an employment agency, a job would turn up. Accounting skills are some of the best to have. All businesses need bookkeepers."

  He looked at her gravely. "You haven't spent much time here, in this state, that is clear. Linda could find a job, that is true. But it would pay - if she were lucky - a little above minimum wage. She doesn't have a degree, you see, only experience. She has two children and a great many bills to pay. The economy of this state is most peculiar. While jobs are plentiful, they are jobs at low wages. A great many of our senior citizens - myself among them - prefer to work part time. This keeps the competitive salary rate low. And yet, the cost of living here is quite high, again as a result of you northerners. Linda can't afford grocery money - much less housing for her family - on what she could earn at a bookkeeping job here in Palm Beach County."

  "I'll speak to Mr. Taylor," said Quill reluctantly. "Although..."

  "Speak to that son of a bitch," Tiffany snarled, coming down the stairs. "Why in the hell would you speak to that son of a bitch?" She reached the foot of the stairs and stretched out her hands to the psychiatrist. "Dr. Bob! Dr. Bob," she wailed. "He's wrecked everything. I knew it. I just knew it."

  "He only has the power you give him," Dr. Bittern said, with w
hat Quill thought was a remarkable lack of sense. Verger Taylor seemed to have more power than the nine justices of the Supreme Court put together. "Excelsior will survive. I have a small building for sale right off of the main boulevard on Singer Island. There is a marvelous view of the ocean, and the quiet will be perfect for our clients."

  "How in the world am I going to afford that?" Tiffany demanded. She'd shed her protective apron. Her. outfit today consisted of yet another tightly fitted jacket. flared at the hips, and a short skirt. The predominant colors were black and yellow. Like a giant, discontented bee, she walked agitatedly around Quill, then into the Food Gallery. She walked along the walls, tapping restlessly at the glass enclosed exhibits with her sharp red nails. Dr. Bittern followed her - and, as if drawn by a psychic magnet, Quill followed them both. "You don't understand. I've got to abandon my precious Excelsior altogether. Verger's cut off all the funding. All of it."

  Dr. Bittern's precise diction dropped away. "What do you mean? Your settlement is more than enough to carry the costs of running the Excelsior."