'Tis the Season to Be Murdered

by Valerie Wolzien

  “If you’ll just come this way, ma’am.”

  Susan followed the black back of the tall man’s tuxedo, wondering if she was going to be arrested. He was leading her down a long hallway with scuffed walls that spoke of heavy use. Was there a holding cell at the end of their path? “Maybe I could just buy a ticket …” she began.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary. We rarely charge admission to the kitchen.”

  Susan, startled, looked up into the eyes of the chef who had been working in the Logans’ kitchen the previous night. “I thought you were a … well, a bouncer,” she admitted.

  “You’re gate-crashing! A society matron like you! I don’t believe it. I always thought that type of thing was confined to fraternity stunts.”

  “It’s not something I usually do,” Susan insisted, deciding not to bother to explain the difference between a middle-aged woman with an interest in civic affairs and a society matron to the young man.

  “Hey, I believe you.…” He pushed open a swinging door and motioned for her to precede him into the bustling room.

  Susan stopped so suddenly that the door smacked her from behind. “Wow.”

  “I gather you’ve never been in the kitchen while an event this size is being held,” the young man said.

  “No. I’ve never been in the kitchen of your average restaurant,” Susan admitted.

  “Well, of course, most of the actual cooking was done back at the carriage house—except for the fillets and the salmon with green peppercorns; that’s the first course—very Christmassy it looks …”

  “The main course is fillet of beef?”

  “Or duck confit—that can be made ahead. And there are about a half dozen special meals—braised flounder cooked with mixed herbs—no salt and no fat.”

  Susan was wondering if that was the choice of the cardiologists or just their patients when she saw Jamie waving at her from the other side of the room. She glanced at her escort, and he nodded.

  “That’s right. She wanted to talk to you.”

  “Is Gwen Ivy around?”

  “She just left,” he said. “But she might be back, so …”

  “I’ll just go see what Jamie wants,” Susan said, understanding his unspoken concern.

  “I’d better get back to work. I think I heard something break behind the bar as I passed. Oh, don’t worry,” he added, seeing the expression on her face. “We expect that. We bring a lot of extra everything to events this size. Sometime, when this is all over, ask me to tell you about the time our van carrying glassware was in an accident two blocks from the Waldorf.”

  Susan smiled and hurried off, making her way through the room, past trays of food under warming lights, people bending over massive steamers full of barely born vegetables, yards of bacon-wrapped fillets, and dozens of crocks coated with rich yellow fat. She told herself that she couldn’t possibly be hungry, but on this particular point, self-delusion wasn’t her strong point.

  Jamie Potter was working on the other side of the room. Susan walked around a line of six empty metal tables to get to what seemed to be the dessert area. “The appetizers were there—but they’re all outside now. We try to keep desserts and the main course separate—no one wants cassis torte that tastes like beef broth.”

  Susan couldn’t argue with that. “That’s the torte?” she asked, looking at the large sponge cake that Jamie was brushing with imported crème de cassis.

  “One of them.” Jamie pointed. “We’ve made thirty in the last twenty-four hours. It’s my favorite dessert, and I made a few extra. Let me get you a slice …”

  “Oh, I don’t …”

  But apparently Jamie recognized that this was a half-hearted protest. She cut a slice off a cake with a dented side, put it on a plate, and doused it liberally with light English cream sauce. “Prepare yourself. It’s wonderful.”

  It was. “But you didn’t bring me down here as an official dessert taster, did you?” Susan asked, eyeing large platters of petit fours and Godiva chocolates.

  “No, we always have enough volunteers for that.”

  “Although if that bitchy mayor’s wife keeps slandering us …,” a chef who was artistically arranging the trays began.

  “The Holly and Ms. Ivy doesn’t serve bad food,” Jamie insisted rather loudly. “And if Gwen ever hears you talking about a client like that you’re not going to have a job,” she added.

  “I’m a temp. I go back to school next week.” The young woman shrugged and continued on down the table.

  “Everyone’s saying that, Mrs. Henshaw. That’s why I wanted to talk with you.”

  “I did hear something about food poisoning, but Jed said that the man who complained is a hypochondriac and—”

  “The mayor is a hypochondriac—”

  “No, Dan Irving,” Susan said. “You’re telling me that Buck Logan got sick after the party last night?”

  “I don’t know. I heard what you heard about two guests being ill. And later, Mayor Logan’s attorney called and threatened to sue. I was in the office when the call came in.”

  Susan wiped the plate with the last bite of her cake and put it in her mouth. “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about it?”

  “Do you think it has something to do with the murder?”

  “I have no idea, but it might.”

  “Well, I was busy working. I had all these cakes to put together—the sponge layers have been frozen for a few weeks—and all the truffles to decorate after they were made, and Gwen was up in her office.”

  “That’s unusual?”

  “Not at all.” Jamie picked up a fresh bottle and poured its purple contents into the bowl she was using. “Gwen or Z are very hands-on people. One of them was always around. And now Gwen is always around. We were talking about it today. She’s going to need a new partner—it’s too big a job for one person to do alone.”

  “The food poisoning.” Susan insisted on returning to the topic at hand, although not without noting that a potential future partner in a concern like this one might have a motive to murder the person he or she hoped to replace.

  “Gwen was there when I got in. As well as four or five other people. But Gwen spent most of the day up in her office. The door was closed, but I guess she was talking on the phone. At least, I was busy slicing the cake layers—”

  “You slice them frozen!”

  “Yes, of course, it’s much easier to get them thin without breaking them that way.” Jamie frowned. “You’re distracting me.”

  “Sorry. Go on.”

  “Well, I was slicing the cakes … Just let me strain the sauce anglaise. Sometimes lumps form as it cools.”

  “Can I help?” Susan offered. She hadn’t known that strainers the size of the one Jamie pulled out from under the counter existed.

  “No. I’m used to doing this alone,” Jamie insisted, getting tall glass pitchers of custard from a nearby refrigerator and starting to work.

  “Anyway, I went upstairs to check with Gwen about how many cakes we were going to need tonight, and she told me that she had been receiving calls from the mayor’s wife all day long and that the Logans’ lawyer had just called to announce that the Logans were planning to sue The Holly and Ms. Ivy for personal damages—or something like that. She was even more upset than she was over Z’s death. It was horrible. I guess these last few days have just been too much for her.”

  The story was interrupted when two waiters ran into the room, slamming the metal swinging doors against the walls and yelling. “We need damp towels quickly! Cool damp towels! Come on, guys!”

  Susan looked and realized that vomit was running down the tuxedos that the two men wore.

  She didn’t know what she was going to find when she joined the group running down the hallway to the room where cocktails were still being served, but she certainly didn’t expect to almost trip over her own daughter, kneeling on the floor and holding the head of an elderly matron over what looked like a crystal vase ful
l of vomit.

  “Did you bring paper towels?” Chrissy asked, not taking the time to look up and recognize her mother.

  “I’m terribly sorry to be such a bother.” The woman gasped for enough breath to get the words out.

  “No bother at all,” Chrissy assured the sick woman, smoothing back her grey hair.

  Susan, astounded by her daughter’s competence, went to search for supplies.

  The room was almost empty. Six or seven guests were suffering from upset stomachs, and one or two people were gathered around each one. Employees of The Holly and Ms. Ivy were rushing between the groups passing out large white dinner napkins. A tall man in a double-breasted tuxedo was walking between the groups, portable phone to his ear, medical bag in his hand. As Susan watched, four paramedics entered the room, equipment and stretchers smashing against the doors and snow falling from their clothing onto the shining parquet floor. Susan backed up and leaned against the wall. She didn’t want to be in the way, but she sure did want to see what was going on.

  The stench was pretty foul, and one or two of the guests left, gagging, as professional help continued to arrive. Every few minutes a door would open, and someone would pass in pitchers of water and heavy, white bath towels. As the doors opened and closed, Susan could hear the band playing show tunes, otherwise it was unnaturally quiet in the ballroom. Remembering the Logans’ response to last night’s problems, Susan wondered how many guests were calling lawyers on their cellular phones.

  A second and third group of paramedics had arrived. The most serious cases had been stabilized and carried off on stretchers. There were more dirty towles being gathered up than clean ones given out when Gwen Ivy arrived.

  She walked in through double doors left open by the last group to leave and stamped across the floor to the middle of the room, the layers of green and cream silk shantung she wore shimmering even after she stopped moving. Hands clenched, she revolved slowly and glared at all corners of the room, absolutely silent. And just as Susan was sure she was going to speak, a heavyset, middle-aged man with a remarkably red nose, his bow tie undone, his cummerbund falling around his hips, stumbled into the room, leaned against a stand of poinsettias, and groaned. “Someone has to help me. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

  Which is how Susan found out that Dan Irving was the man she’d always thought of as that drunk down at the club. She didn’t know what everyone else thought of him, but she noticed that his statement was not regarded as compelling by at least half of the people present. As he slid to the floor, one of the medics strolled over, pulled Dan Irving’s arm from his cuff and took his pulse with a bored look on her face—and then screamed. “Shit! This man’s really sick. Where’s that damn doctor?”

  The man with the medical bag hurried to her side, calling over his shoulder as he went. “Go next door and find John Travers. Tell him we need a cardiologist in here right away. This man’s in cardiac arrest.”

  THIRTEEN

  Susan woke up determined to start getting some answers—right after she stocked her freezer with appetizers. If The Holly and Ms. Ivy shut down, she’d need something to feed her guests come Saturday night. The gourmet deli downtown carried tiny frozen brioche and croissants with a variety of fillings—not terribly original, but better than nothing if seventy hungry people show up at the door.

  Maybe she should think of laying in a supply of champagne, she thought, taking the dog on her morning walk. If they didn’t need it for the party, it could always be used to celebrate other occasions, she decided, having absolutely no idea just what such an occasion might be. Chrissy’s engagement? She pulled Clue away from the pile of soiled cocktail napkins that someone had dropped in the street. Her daughter had been asleep when she left the house, but Susan knew they had to talk. When, she wondered, was she going to meet this new boyfriend? And why hadn’t Chrissy introduced him to her family before this?

  It was garbage collection day, and Clue was having a ball, jumping around on the Christmas trees left at the curb by neighbors lucky enough to fly off to someplace warm after Christmas. Susan sighed, wondering if she was feeling a normal post–holiday depression. And then decided that three days before her big party was no time to get like this.

  Clue’s head was stuck in the middle of a large tinsel-strewn balsam. “Come on, Clue,” Susan insisted, pulling on the leash. The dog shook her entire body and, with a ripping sound, emerged, a branch bearing a candy cane held proudly between her teeth. Susan chuckled, her dour mood vanishing. “How would you like to do some visiting with me today?” she asked the happy animal.

  Clue apparently approved of the idea, and they walked companionably back to Susan’s car. “You wait here, and I’ll go get my purse,” Susan told the dog, as the animal climbed into her backseat. She hurried into the house, thinking that one of the nicest things about golden retrievers is their ability to look as though they are intensely interested in everything anyone was saying—without understanding a single word.

  Susan entered her kitchen and wondered exactly what she was doing there, before the sight of her purse on the table reminded her of her goal. Putting any thoughts of Alzheimer’s away in the back of her mind (where they would surely be lost), she wrote a quick note to anyone in her family who might be interested in her whereabouts, grabbed her purse, and headed back to the car. First the appetizers, then she was going to visit Alexis and Gillian. They were both giving big parties that night; she knew she’d find them at their homes.

  The gourmet shop in Hancock had started out as a cheese shop. But the Brie had needed baguettes, the Camembert required crackers, and then pâtés, soups, salads, cakes, pies, rare fruits, and vegetables had appeared on shelves and counters, until it became an all-purpose grocery—if your purpose was to purchase the finest and most costly food available. She hurried past the elegant fare to the large freezers at the rear of the store. To her surprise, they were empty. She turned and found the rather snotty proprietor standing behind her.

  “I was looking for frozen appetizers,” she explained.

  “Frozen canapés,” the woman corrected her.

  “Yes. Well, where are they?”

  “We’re out.”

  “Are you going to be getting more in before Saturday?” Susan asked as politely as she could manage between gritted teeth.

  “We hope so. Would you like me to reserve some for you?”

  “Please.”

  “You can put your name down on the list by the cash register,” the woman explained, obviously too important to do such menial tasks.

  There were two young women chatting together behind the counter by the cash register as Susan moved there to accomplish her task.

  “We’re certainly making a lot of money because of his death. Our orders were way down this season because The Holly and Ms. Ivy were doing so many parties in Hancock. But now, we’re raking it in. Everyone is stocking up at the last moment—”

  “Did you hear that The Holly and Ms. Ivy are folding?” Susan interrupted to ask anxiously.

  “Not yet. But the people whose parties they’re catering this week are certainly getting prepared. We’re doing record business,” one saleswoman answered.

  “But what can we do to help you?” the other saleswoman asked.

  “I’d like to put my name down on the list to reserve some frozen canapés when they come in later this week.”

  “Of course.”

  That business complete, Susan returned to her car and started out on her next task.

  Hancock was a pre-Revolution stage stop that had grown from a small hamlet into a small town, becoming a suburb of New York City back in the fifties and, like much of this part of Connecticut, enjoying a boom in the affluent eighties. During that decade, the few vacant lots had been bought up by smart investors who had built large expensive homes, selling them off at a huge profit. Gillian and Alexis lived next door to each other in two of these homes. Both houses had all the eighties requirements: roofs jutting
out in all directions, three-car garages, and windows in every shape imaginable. Inside there were multiple bathrooms (each equipped with a whirlpool), spacious eat-in kitchens, so that the elaborate dining rooms need not be used, and massive family rooms to keep the living rooms impeccable. Each house also boasted a master bedroom suite as well as two other bedrooms. Alexis’s son hadn’t lived with her since her divorce. Susan wondered who was sleeping in the extra bedrooms as she walked up the sidewalk to Alexis’s front door.

  A pair of blue-spruce wreaths hung on the white double doors, and Susan inhaled their fragrance as she knocked. It was ten o’clock on the morning of Alexis’s big Christmas party. Susan knew exactly how terrible she was going to look at this time Saturday, but Alexis, when she opened the door, looked wonderful.

  As always, she was dressed beautifully. Black leather slacks, a bold red-and-black, geometric-patterned sweater, and two or three black silk barrettes in her hair completed her ensemble, and Susan, as always, wished she had dressed more carefully this morning. When was she going to learn? In suburbia, casual was not to be confused with sloppy. She tugged at the waistband of her too-tight jeans and smiled. “Do you have a minute?”

  “Of course.” Alexis opened the doorway wider to permit her to enter. “It’s about Z’s death, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m looking into it,” Susan said, not exactly lying, but perhaps implying police support of her activities.

  Alexis looked as though she were thinking over Susan’s words. Then she smiled and said, “Why don’t we talk upstairs? The Holly and Ms. Ivy people are filling the kitchen with glasses and setting up the dining room and living room. It’s quieter up there.”

  Susan readily agreed. She followed Alexis to the second floor.

  They proceeded down a hallway to a large corner room with a fireplace on one wall. Another stairway led upward. Like the rest of the house, this place was decorated in the style known as country. Not that most country people had time to indulge in so many crafts. Every couch was covered with at least a half-dozen handmade pillows; the mantel supported dozens of wrought iron candleholders; wreaths hung on walls; and boughs of dried flowers were balanced above each doorway and window frame. Everything was lovely and very expensive. And maybe, Susan thought, just a bit overdone.