Flour in the Attic

by Winnie Archer

  I hadn’t seen Billy since before Emmaline had planned to propose to him. He’d been available for Agatha, so I’d jumped at the chance to see him, even if only for a few minutes.

  His house was a small single-story fixer-upper with a one-car garage. He’d bought it as a foreclosure, without seeing the inside. Emmaline and I had gone with him to see it for the first time after the sale was finalized. Whoever had owned it—and lost it—had taken a bat to the walls, spilled cans of paint over the flooring, ripped out the bathroom faucets, broken most of the light fixtures, and left the place uninhabitable. Billy had gotten it for a steal, though, and since he was a contractor, he had access to resources at wholesale and the know-how to bring the place back to its mid-century glory. It was a work in progress, and he loved every minute of it.

  I pulled up to the house, parking alongside the curb. Billy’s truck was in the driveway. The garage door was open and he was hunched over a rectangular table that sat in the middle of the space, electric sander roaring in his hand. He flipped the switch, turning it off when he saw me, sliding the clear safety goggles up to his forehead.

  “This is beautiful,” I said, running my fingers along the smooth surface of the table. The base was made from what looked like reclaimed wood beams from a barn, the joints connected with industrial-looking metal. It looked, and felt, like Billy was doing the final sanding of the reclaimed wood top.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said, putting the sander down and scratching Agatha’s head affectionately.

  She looked up at him with her bulging eyes and blinked.

  “Good to see you, too, Ags,” he said.

  Billy’s hobby was woodworking and carpentry, which usually took the form of handmade furniture. Any jobs he got were strictly through word-of-mouth and he was very selective about the projects he took on. He was a perfectionist and did everything at 110 percent. People were willing to pay the price. I set Agatha down, holding on to her leash. She sniffed around at the sawdust, turning in a circle, her paws leaving footprints in the powdery particles of wood. “Who’s it for?” I asked.

  “It’s for me.” He smiled mischievously, his hazel eyes twinkling. “And Em.”

  I felt my eyebrows lift. “You and Em?” They didn’t currently live together, and as far as I knew, he wasn’t aware of the imminent marriage proposal.

  He laid the goggles down next to the sander and headed into the house, crooking his finger at me so I’d follow. He headed straight for the kitchen, grabbing a glass and filling it with water. He gulped it down before facing me. “Can you keep a secret?”

  I laughed. Could I ever. I wanted so badly to tell him about Emmaline’s romantic plan, the cool ring she’d found for him, and the marital bliss in his future, but I’d been sworn to secrecy, and that was a promise I’d never break. “Um, yeah,” I said smugly. “I can.”

  He hesitated for just a second before sliding open one of the kitchen drawers. He withdrew a little gray box tied with a pink ribbon. He opened it and took out a small black velvet jewelry box. My breath caught in my throat. Delicately perched inside was a stunning white-gold engagement ring with a marquis-cut center diamond. Small round diamonds were in a pavé setting like a halo in the band. “Oh my God,” I breathed, cupping my hands around his and the velvet box. “It’s beautiful.”

  He grinned, looking goofy and thrilled and excited, like a little boy on Christmas morning with a stocking chock-full of trinkets and goodies. “You really think so?”

  “Billy, yes. God, it’s gorgeous.”

  “You think she’ll like it?”

  He sounded nervous, which was absurd. Emmaline was my oldest friend. I knew her as well as I knew myself. Better, maybe. If Emmaline were to pick out her own ring, this would be exactly what she’d choose. “She’s going to love it,” I said, and then giddiness overcame me and I jumped up and down, rubbing my hands together. “You’re going to propose?”

  He nodded, his expression turning sheepish.

  “You’re going to propose!” I exclaimed. There couldn’t be two people more perfect for one another than Billy and Emmaline, right down to the fact that they’d both planned to propose to one another . . .

  “When?” I asked, wondering who’d beat who to the punch. “How?”

  He tucked the ring box back into the drawer. “I was going to do it the other night at the beach, but then, well, you know. The dead body kinda spoiled the moment.”

  I blinked. He’d been intending to propose at the same time she had? Talk about simpatico. “Yeah. So what now?”

  He ran his hand through the waves of his dark hair. Billy looked like my dad, with his brown hair, blue-green eyes, and lean stature. I, on the other hand, had taken after our mom with her fairer skin and curly, ginger, untamed hair. “Not till this case is solved. She’s pretty consumed by it.”

  “I know the feeling.” Death, no matter whose it was, had a way of creeping in and staying put.

  “Funeral’s today, eh?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for taking Agatha.”

  He looked down and winked at the pug. “No prob, right, Ags? We’re going to clean up the garage so I can do the finish work on the table.”

  “She can play in the backyard, too,” I said, not wanting him to feel as if he had to have her by his side the entire day. Dog-sitting was a responsibility, but it wasn’t as all-consuming as babysitting, and Agatha was relatively independent as dogs went. She liked to be my shadow, but she was perfectly capable of entertaining herself or taking a good long nap in the sun.

  “I got it, Ivy. Me and Agatha, we’ll be just fine.”

  I crouched down and looked her in the eyes. “See you later, alligator.”

  She sniffed at me, then pressed her cold nose to mine. It was her version of a kiss. I unsnapped her harness, slipped it over her head, and with one last look at me, she trotted off to explore Billy’s house.

  * * *

  I arrived at Yeast of Eden fifteen minutes later, where I found Olaya already elbow-deep in bread dough. Whatever she was making, it was not part of the menu we’d planned for the funeral. “Italian sfogliatelle,” I repeated after she’d told me what she was working on. “What is that?”

  “Mija, you are in for a treat. It is a delight.” She turned the wood-grip hand crank of a chrome-plated steel pasta machine that was clamped to the counter at her workstation. The sheet of pasta dough she fed through the plates of the machine emerged as a long, thin, six-inch-wide rectangle.

  “Pasta?” I asked, puzzled. I’d never seen her use a pasta machine in the bread shop’s kitchen, or anywhere else for that matter.

  She tapped the pads of her fingers on the top of the appliance as if it were a beloved house cat. “This machine, it is good for more than simply pasta. Sfogliatelle comes from the Campania region of Italy. They are sweet delicacies, a bit like the French croissant.”

  I watched, fascinated, as she finished pressing the dough through the machine. Next, she cut the rectangle of dough into roughly twenty-inch-long sections, brushing each one with melted butter, layering them as she went. Finally, she tightly rolled the stack into itself like a jelly roll, wrapped it in plastic, and moved on to the next one. In all, she made six rolls, taking them to the walk-in refrigerator when she had them all buttered, layered, rolled, and wrapped.

  “These will be for the shop tomorrow,” she said. “A special treat.”

  Yeast of Eden was not a traditional bakery. Olaya’s focus was always on bread, specifically long-rise yeast breads. Once in a while, however, she baked other unexpected things. Usually these specialty items were related to an event she was catering or some special request someone had made. I’d seen her bake things like Russian babka, British clangers, and Scandinavian kringlers, but I’d never seen the likes of these Italian sfogliatelle. She took some already prepared rolls of dough from the refrigerator and unwrapped the first one. Using a sharp knife, she cut the roll into one-inch slices, then repeated with the others until she had sixty pin
wheel-like rounds lined up on the counter.

  “This is the difficult part,” she said as she took a dough round in one hand and began pressing the thumb of her other hand into the center.

  “It all looks difficult,” I said. I’d put my things down and washed my hands, and now picked up one of the pinwheel rounds, following her lead.

  She started to stretch the dough, warning me not to push into it yet. “You do not want to make a cavity too soon. First it must be bigger and flatter.”

  I did as she said, stopping when the dough was several inches in diameter.

  “Now you must start to smooth it out. Push down in the center. Yes, that is right. You are creating a hollow in the dough, like a cone.”

  “It looks like a clamshell,” I said, holding up the finished cone. The large opening was about three inches, tapering down to the smaller end, which was just about an inch wide.

  Olaya nodded approvingly. I took mental notes as she brushed a bit of butter on the dough and then deftly turned it inside out, cupping the now inside-out cone in the palm of her hand. She quickly walked to the stove, returning with a large frying pan filled with a sautéed onion, colorful finely chopped bell peppers, and crab. She carefully deposited two large spoonfuls of the filling into the hollow of dough, filling it to the top. Finally, she closed the mouth of the cone by carefully folding the dough over onto itself as if she were closing two halves of a clamshell together.

  She laid it carefully on a baking sheet and then moved on to another.

  I stood by her side, stretching, shaping, filling, and closing the sfogliatelle pastries until all sixty were finished. We brushed each one with an egg wash before baking them.

  “Those for tomorrow, here at the bread shop, they will be sweet with a ricotta and lemon filling.” She pointed to the rolling bakery rack off to one side of the kitchen. “But for the funeral today, we have the savory filling.”

  I walked to the rack to get a look at the finished sfogliatelle, my lips parting in awe as I saw them all lined up, row after row after row. There had to be at least sixty here already. They had puffed up during the baking process, and looking closely at them now, I saw what the rolled pinwheels had created. The process of rolling the thin layers of dough into rounds, then pressing them out into cones, had created layer upon layer upon layer of flaky pastry. They looked like stacks of leaves, I thought. Each one was a work of art. I took my camera from its bag and snapped a few pictures. The pastries were delicate and beautiful, and I wanted to capture them on film.

  Olaya always arrived at the bread shop in the wee hours of the morning, but she must have come practically in the middle of the night to get these made, I thought.

  “Marisol was a friend,” she said, as if she’d read my mind and wanted to explain why she’d made so much of something so complicated. “In America, these are filled with cream and called lobster tails. See how they are similar? Marisol, she loved the water. These crab-stuffed sfogliatelle are not traditional, pero they reflect her passion.”

  I felt my eyes prick. No one else might recognize the symbolism of Olaya’s pastry, but it was a beautiful sentiment.

  She waved her hand in a gesture telling me to go ahead and try one. I carefully picked one up, cupped my free hand under my chin, and took a bite. The thin layers of dough were similar to a croissant, yet different at the same time. Crispier. More delicate. The crab filling was still warm and mixed with the fine pastry leaves to create an explosion of texture and flavors in my mouth. I didn’t think I’d ever had anything this good.

  “They’re brilliant, Olaya,” I said when I’d swallowed the first bite. “Better than brilliant.”

  With the back of one hand, she brushed a strand of her charcoal hair from her face. “You are easy to please,” she said, but her eyes gleamed. She knew they were good, and she knew that, in her own way, she was honoring Marisol with them.

  We worked through the morning, baking the bread for the sliders and meatballs, rolling flour tortillas, smearing three rounds of brie with fig compote, covering them with puff pastry, and readying them to bake. The list went on and on, but we stayed on task and by one o’clock, we had loaded up the bread shop’s van and headed to Vista Ridge Funeral Home.

  We drove around to the back of the building. I always had my camera handy, taking pictures of interesting things in my day-to-day life. In the back of the funeral home parking lot, a brick wall was in progress along one side, a pallet of bricks carefully wrapped in plastic sitting against the already completed portion of the wall, piles of yet-to-be-used bricks from a partially used pallet, and bags of mortar stacked alongside it. It looked like it would create an enclosed courtyard when it was done. An extension of the memorial garden, perhaps? I loved the look of the worn bricks the Alcotts had chosen for the enclosure, and the unfinished state leant itself to interesting composition. Olaya stopped for me so I could frame the shot from a few different angles, then she found a parking spot close to the double doors leading into the building.

  A row of windows ran under the roofline, and a driveway led down to a basement-level loading bay. I shaded my eyes and peered down the mild incline. A hearse was parked at the bottom. A woman appeared at the back corner, hose in one hand, a scrub brush on an extended pole in the other. She pressed the finger trigger on the hose. A stream of water shot out like pressurized water from a fire hose. The jet hit the back of the black car, spraying out on all sides. The woman leapt out of the way, turning her head, and I recognized her. Suzanne Alcott. I took a few more pictures, capturing the stream of water. When I looked at it later, I hoped to see droplets in midair falling around the woman.

  Suzanne Alcott directed the hose to the ground, zigzagging it back and forth, steering it clear of herself. “Hello!” I called, waving to her.

  She jumped, releasing the trigger, and the stream of water stopped suddenly. She dropped the brush, whipping her head around. “Oh, Christ, you scared me.”

  “Sorry,” I called. “I didn’t meant to startle you. We’re here for Marisol’s service.”

  She peered up at me. “Of course. It’s Ivy, right?”

  “That’s right. Good memory. We’re going to set up.”

  “Sure. Okay. Her husband was here earlier. I’m just finishing up. Benjamin ran an errand, but he’ll be back soon. Do you need help?”

  I looked over my shoulder at Olaya, who was already hauling a tray of baked goods from the Yeast of Eden van into the funeral home. “I think we’ve got it,” I said, “but thanks.”

  “I’ll see you inside, then,” she said, before depressing the trigger of the hose nozzle. Once again, the water shot out. She directed it to the hearse and got back to her task at hand.

  “The sfogliatelle first, por favor,” Olaya called to me. She’d propped open the door with a partial bag of cement from the brick wall construction and was on her second trip. “The crab cannot sit here in the van.”

  I lifted my hand in acknowledgment, headed to the back of the van, and took out one of the several trays filled with the lobster-tail pastries. Olaya had waited for me at the door, directing me to the reception room. Inside, I placed the tray on one of the tables that had been set up for us and took in the surroundings. A blown-up framed photograph of Marisol sat on an easel at the front of the room, as well as a small bouquet of flowers in a green vase. They looked like they’d come from a grocery store florist. David, I thought, my heart going out to him.

  “We will need more tables,” Olaya said, bringing me back to the food. “Miguel, he is on his way soon. There will not be enough room.”

  “I’ll go ask,” I said, as we walked back outside together. Olaya went back to the van to get another tray while I made a sharp turn at the end of the railing, skirted around a spilled bag of fine gray cement, and walked down the sloped driveway. Suzanne had finished her task. The hose was wound neatly around the wall-mounted reel. The car-wash brush with the extended handle still attached, along with a looped-end commercial string mop,
sat in a large yellow bucket with casters and a wringing basket.

  I walked around the black hearse and stood on the threshold of the open doorway. My lungs constricted as I took in the utilitarian room before me. Laminate cabinets lined two of the four walls. Stainless steel tables on wheels looked as if they raised and lowered with a pneumatic system. Sinks, tubing, and other equipment I couldn’t begin to understand sat on the countertops and were connected to machines. The reception and visitation rooms upstairs, the memorial garden, the casket room—all of that represented the polished side of the mortuary business; this space, with the body drawers and the worktables and the drains in the floor, showed the other end of the spectrum. The room was purely functional and not something that anyone wanted to think about.

  “Suzanne?” I called.

  Silence.

  I tried again, thinking maybe I was being too familiar. “Ms. Alcott?”

  The beige door at the end of the room flung open. Suzanne Alcott burst through, clutching her cell phone to her ear. “That’s fine,” she was saying, then she listened, responding a minute later. “Twelve o’clock. Great, see him then.” She paused, then spotted me, surprise sliding onto her face. She tilted the phone up. “Hey. You really shouldn’t be down here. Can I help you?”

  I pointed up toward the ceiling. “We need more tables.”

  She raised her eyebrows in a question. I started to say it again, but she held up a finger, turning her back on me and going back to her phone conversation. “Got it,” she said. “Yep. Yep. Okay.”

  She hung up, slipped the phone into her back pocket, then turned back to me. “Sorry about that. What do you need?”

  “We need a few more tables in the reception room upstairs. For the food.”