Prime Cut

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I slugged back the espresso. “Cameron didn’t do it, I’m telling you. Yesterday André told me Leah Smythe—or somebody at the cabin—fired Eliot for sleeping with a model. Maybe they broke up.”

  “So you think some skinny model killed big, strong Eliot? Then hung him up in Cam’s sun room?”

  “Not necessarily.” I tried to think. “I’m just suggesting other people besides Cameron disliked Gerald Eliot. Take me, for instance, although I didn’t really want to see him dead. But there might be more to Gerald Eliot than Fuller wants to see. Did you have a look at the Homestead?”

  Tom nodded. Before he could elaborate, the phone rang and he answered it. He murmured a couple of questions, took notes in his spiral pad, then hung up. “Interesting update. I’m going to heat muffins. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Okay, early yesterday morning the call came from Sylvia Bevans about a break-in at the museum. My team covered the call, by the way. I just hadn’t told you about it; it seemed so routine. Sylvia was beside herself, babbling about a missing cookbook.”

  “Cookbook?”

  He smiled and spread frozen cinnamon-raisin muffins on a cookie sheet. “Yeah, I thought you’d take some professional interest in the theft. Sylvia Bevans, of course, reamed us out, but good.”

  “Oh, brother.” Now this was a scenario I could imagine. The much-feared, seventy-year-old curator of the Homestead Museum would have ushered the cops into the sacred precinct of her cluttered historical society office and puckered her already thin-lipped mouth in fierce and undisguised disapproval. One of her seemingly endless wardrobe of pastel linen dresses—lilac, lime, or pink—would have strained at mother-of-pearl buttons over her ample body as she indignantly demanded the authorities find the culprit immediately!

  Tom cleared his throat. “Two of the glass-fronted display cases were smashed. Sylvia told us one cookbook was missing. Today, she’s screaming about four cookbooks being stolen. They were part of an exhibit. She didn’t realize they were missing at first, she was in such a state.” Tom chuckled. “Only one book was in her initial report, so now Fuller’s accusing her of insurance scam. She chewed him out, said the Homestead’s not insured ‘cuz the county’s too cheap to pay the premiums.”

  I thought of the book in the evidence bag found at Cameron Burr’s home. “So have they found all four cookbooks?”

  “They found one in Cam’s trash and a second one underneath drywall in the sun room. Sylvia’s up in arms about their historic value, but as far as we can determine, each is only worth a couple hundred dollars.” He peered into the oven. “They’ll keep looking, don’t worry.”

  Thinking of poor Cameron in the backseat of the police vehicle, I rinsed out our cups and the doser, then ground more espresso beans. I asked, “What’s Fuller’s big push to nab Burr?”

  Tom flipped off the oven light and straightened with a sigh. “He’s caught a lot of heat for the plea bargains, and he sees this one as easy. Plus the rumors about him trying for state attorney general have been getting stronger lately. This could be a high-profile case. He’d get a lot of press for being a crime fighter, that kind of thing.”

  I measured the coffee into the doser, pressed the button, and waited for the espresso to spurt out. “Would they have to find all four cookbooks up at Cameron’s house for him actually to be prosecuted?”

  Tom shrugged. “Fuller’s got a half-dozen investigators sniffing around the museum and Burr’s place. Our guys usually find everything. If they don’t, and Burr’s defense claims shoddy investigation, Fuller can argue that anything not found is excess evidence and unnecessary in prosecuting Burr.”

  It was my turn to sigh. “So what exactly were these cookbooks?”

  He peered at his notes. “The first one we found is American Cookery by Amelia Simmons. Famous for its johnnycake recipe, according to Sylvia. This one wasn’t the original 1796 edition—apparently the museum’s was a nineteenth-century copy—but someone donated it to the historical society, and they put it on display.”

  Of course the Homestead would put a cookbook on display that contained the seminal recipe for Western Cooking 101. Johnnycake or Johnnie cake, also known as journey cake, had been slapped together and cooked over fires by thousands of folks coming out in covered wagons to Colorado and points west. When I’d served as a docent at the museum, I’d ushered many a class of Furman County fourth graders into the Homestead kitchen to make a cider version of the moist coffee cake.

  “The other cookbook they found is a 1903 edition of The White House Cookbook. So we need to find a 1910 volume called The Practical Cook Book by one Elizabeth Hiller, valued in the range of sixty bucks. The fourth book is something called the Watkins Cookbook, from 1936. Worth fifty dollars.” He handed me a plate of muffins. “Watkins Cookbook? That’s not something Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick put together in his spare time, is it?”

  “No,” I replied, “it’s not an English cookbook. And the sidekick was Watson, remember? Thanks for the treat.” I bit into the hot, sweet muffin and remembered the humble red spiral-bound volume with its battered cover and spattered pages. “The Watkins man came out to Western ranches once a year in his horse and buggy. After the invention of cars, he drove a Model T truck. He brought peppermint, vanilla, liniment, whatever ranch folks needed, including simple recipe-books put out by the Watkins company, based in Minnesota, but with a reach all across the West. Everybody loved to see the Watkins man come,” I said with a smile. “And every rural household had a Watkins Cookbook.”

  “Aha! I’m so glad you worked in that museum, Miss G. I never know when I’m going to learn something.” He paused. “Anyway, I’m off the Eliot case. I told them my wife’s friend was arrested, so if they’ve got anything, to let me know. How’s that?”

  “Thank you. For everything. And especially for not staying mad at me.”

  “You need to stop worrying, Miss G.” He pondered the gap above our kitchen sink. Just as he’d done at the cabin, Gerald Eliot had glued plywood over the plaster crevice. He’d certainly never be back to repair the damage. “Think Arch would like to join me for a trip to the hardware store? Better yet, would you like to join me?”

  I took another bite of muffin. Was I in the mood to look at galvanized nails after I’d just seen a corpse defiled by them? No. I urged Tom to go and take Arch with him. They could do some male bonding. Tom grinned.

  Arch, wearing a faded yellow T-shirt and a pair of too-large red Cornell sweatpants—gifts from Julian—warned that they might be out for a while. He needed to be dropped at the Druckmans’ house so he and Todd could finish their conversation on the subject of sending encrypted messages.

  “Can you tell me what these messages are?” I asked mildly. “Or would that destroy the reason for the encryption?”

  Arch opened a new bag of kibble for his bloodhound. “It’s no big deal,” he replied in a bored tone. “But if you want to come outside while I feed Jake, I’ll tell you.” I poured Arch a glass of o.j. and followed him through the back door to the deck area designated for his dog. I tried not to glance up at our roof, where the remains of Arch’s ham radio—his attempt to communicate long-distance with Julian in the Navajo language—lay like the spokes of an abandoned umbrella. Arch had been fascinated with learning the language because Navajo radiomen had foiled Axis cryptanalysts in World War II. But Julian had only succeeded in teaching Arch Ya’atey—hello—when a fierce windstorm had split the radio antenna in two.

  Now Arch scooped nuggets into Jake’s bowl and began explaining the latest reasons for his interest in encryption. Jake kept his eyes on his food bowl. “School starts in a couple of weeks. Todd and I are wondering which eighth-grade girls will be available to be girlfriends, and which ones will just make fun of us.”

  “The girls have high-tech equipment on their phones?”

  “Nothing would surprise me, Mom.”

  From the deck railing, Scout—a cream-and-chocolate stray cat we’d ado
pted several years ago—kept a watchful eye on Jake and the speed with which he was emptying his bowl. Arch ignored the animals, drank the juice I’d brought him, and checked his appearance in the reflection in the window overlooking our backyard.

  The comforting noise of Tom’s revving Chrysler floated out of the garage toward us. Jake raised mournful eyes to Arch: leaving so soon? “I’ll be back,” Arch consoled him. “Look, Mom, double-check the gate, okay? Yesterday, Jake got out somehow. He was barking at elk and got out of control.”

  “Okay, hon,” I promised. Arch hopped down the deck steps. The Chrysler roared away, carrying my family. As if on cue, a sudden cracking noise indicated a dozen elk were shattering branches underfoot as they plodded through our neighbor’s yard. Jake, of course, instantly began to howl.

  “Stop, Jake. Come on, boy, come in.”

  But the hound would not budge. Nor would he be quiet. I went inside, closed the door against the canine uproar, and shook my head. In late summer, the huge dun-and-brown elk herds flood through Aspen Meadow, fleeing the first wave of hunters. No respecters of property lines, the elk leap fences, use their powerful necks and big tongues to tear out strawberry plants, strip fruit trees, devour flowers, and gobble bushes. Then they defecate happily and plod on. Our neighbor occasionally bags one with his rifle, hunting season or no.

  Only Tom had managed to outsmart the marauders. With great care, he’d lofted nets over our Montmorency cherry trees and tied the nets to the trunks. While awaiting his captain’s call the previous night, Tom had patiently salvaged the last of the scarlet fruit. Through the back window, I watched the elk quizzically appraise our trees. Nothing there, boys, time to move out.

  I crossed to the counter, moved the faxed map showing the location of Eliot’s body, and surveyed with a sinking heart the clutter of glasses, plates, and measuring cups. Before Gerald Eliot had revved up his saw, he’d asked me to empty the cabinets on the left side of the window. Then he’d crashed through the window and the right-hand cabinet, and the contents of those shelves had ended up in smithereens.

  The next day, Eliot had bounded up my front steps all smiles, sketchy plans for a new kitchen tucked under his arm. He’d claimed he could have my new kitchen done before the first snow. Ha. Although it was always difficult for me to believe that people could so heartlessly try to take advantage, I’d been forced to accept Tom’s assessment of constructor sabotage. I’d stonily told Eliot to fix the window; my husband would repair the cabinet. Now my remaining glasses teetered in stacks; the broken cabinet stood on its side in the hallway. How many other people had Eliot tried to cheat this way? And had any other clients wanted to strangle him the way I’d longed to?

  I took a steadying breath of the sweet, fresh air pouring through gaps in the dusty plastic. With The Jerk and his violent nature temporarily locked up in jail, I had taken for granted the fact that we could finally relax with our windows open. Or rather, relax with our windows missing. I refilled my espresso machine with water, ground a handful of fragrant coffee beans, and rinsed Tom’s bowl of homegrown cherries.

  As the water gushed over the fruit, my mind snapped back to the traumas of the last two days. What would happen to Cameron now? Had Cameron murdered Gerald Eliot? What could I do? Interfere and you’ll get Cameron, Tom, and yourself into more trouble, my inner voice warned.

  I sharpened a knife, started pitting the cherries, then washed my hands and put in a call to Lutheran Hospital to check on Barbara Burr. I was told she could not be disturbed. Next I phoned the sheriff’s department to see if they could tell me anything about Cameron. Burr was being processed, I was told. Like liverwurst? I longed to ask.

  I energetically mixed the pitted cherries with sugar and cornstarch. I loved the Burrs; both had been extraordinarily kind to Arch when he was eight and I was doing my docent work. Cameron, then president of the county historical society, could talk about Aspen Meadow’s history the way some people can croon show tunes. The times I’d had to take Arch with me to the museum, Cameron had kept my son spellbound with stories of local outlaws, ghosts, Indians, and untold, priceless treasure buried in Aspen Meadow. Arch had been rapt. I hadn’t been immune either.

  I laid the fruit in a buttered pan and thought back to the photos on the Burrs’ guest house walls: Cameron and Barbara with shovels and maps. In the thirties, Cameron had told Arch, Aspen Meadow and Blue Spruce had been aswarm with treasure hunters. A persistent Depression-era rumor held that a stagecoach robber had buried a coffee can chockful of gold pieces in a mine shaft in Aspen Meadow or Blue Spruce. Forget that there was no mining in Aspen Meadow or Blue Spruce; Arch had subsequently insisted we follow a trail that—legend had it—led to the gold at the top of Smythe Peak. We’d dug for hours, to no avail, and our only company had been Steller’s jays squawking at us for invading their domain.

  I beat butter with sugar for the cobbler topping, and recalled Arch’s wide-eyed plea that we visit a local ranch where longhorn steer were raised. There, contrary to recorded history but according to Cameron Burr, Jesse James and his gang had buried fifty thousand dollars at the foot of a lodgepole pine. The trick was finding the right tree. Jesse James himself had supposedly pointed a knife downward to the treasure, and embedded the weapon in the pine tree’s trunk. If he had, both the knife and the fifty thousand were still there, because Arch hadn’t found them.

  I measured flour with baking powder, remembering the time Cameron and Barbara had accompanied us on one of the many treasure hunts Cameron had sparked in my too-imaginative son. The Burrs, Arch, and I had crawled through the crumbling Swiss-built inn west of Aspen Meadow where the Bund—Nazis and their sympathizers, posing as bicycling tourists, the story went—had allegedly met during the Second World War. The inn, empty for years and recently renovated as apartments, had given us permission to search the place while the construction crew worked on new plumbing. Alas, to Arch’s intense disappointment, we’d uncovered no stash of deutsche marken below swastikas carved—by squatters? Or by frustrated treasure seekers?—on closet floors.

  Now, at fourteen, Arch didn’t drag me out on treasure hunts anymore. Instead, he listened to pounding rock music, worried intensely about his appearance, and yearned for Julian to move back. And though he would never admit it, the only thing Arch truly wanted was a girlfriend.

  I stirred egg into the cobbler dough and dropped spoonfuls of the thick, golden batter on top of the glistening cherries. No treasure, no girlfriend, and the Burrs in deep trouble. Gerald Eliot dead. And I needed catering business. I slid the cobbler into the oven and contemplated my booking calendar.

  This was Tuesday, August nineteenth. Unfortunately, my slimy catering competitor, Craig Litchfield, had so severely cut into my bookings that I had no work until a week from today. And even more unfortunately, that work was unpaid. Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August, was the date of the rescheduled tasting party at the Homestead. This time, the catering competition for the Merciful Migrations September Soiree would be silent. I would be up against André and Craig Litchfield. The Soirée committee included my frequent catering clients Edna Hardcastle and Weezie Harrington, as well as Marla. How had the committee arrived at the decision that they even needed to put the event out for bids? I had no idea.

  I loved André. I would enjoy working by his side even if he won the competition. Still, I was sure Craig Litchfield had somehow forced the issue of a contest. What I couldn’t imagine—and what was troubling me—was the means he would employ to try to win it.

  I made another espresso, wished I had one of Julian Teller’s indescribably flaky, bittersweet-chocolate filled croissants to go with it, then stared glumly at my calendar. The day after the tasting party was Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of August. That night, I would be doing a birthday dinner party for twenty for Weezie Harrington. Wealthy widows and divorcees always worry that no one will remember their birthdays, so they often give a party for themselves. Weezie was no exception, although she’d had a friend issue th
e invitations.

  I moved my finger across the calendar. My next booking after Weezie’s party was Saturday, August thirtieth. That day, Edna Hardcastle’s daughter Isabel would finally, finally be married, and I would cater the twice-postponed reception. But two booked events and one tasting party would not be enough. With Tom suspended, and no money coming in, I had to find more work.

  I put in a call to André’s condominium and got the caregiver for Andre’s wife, Pru. Pru’s handicap made her extremely shy. I had only met her once, as she disliked going out or having people over. Dealing with Pru’s condition, plus the cost of her maintenance, had contributed to Andre’s concerns after his retirement.

  “Yes? What is it?” Chef Happy sounded even more brusque than usual.

  I told André about discovering Gerald Eliot’s body at the Burrs’. I also told him about Tom’s suspension. In order to avoid digressing, I left out the details. But André clucked that the Ian’s Images people had already had a fit when the police canceled the shoot at the Burrs’ house. I told him I was desperate for work. If he could bridge me in to work part-time on the shoot, I promised to take only two dollars over minimum wage.

  “Goldy! You worry how the models demean themselves, and then you do it to yourself,” my old friend chided. “Yes, come on Friday.” He tsked. “They have agreed to pay me double for that day. Which I am happy to take, since the cost of living in the mountains is so exorbitant.”

  “Double? For what?”

  “The shoot has many problems. I have had much overtime. Ian Hood broke his lens. He already destroyed one of his cameras, but does he care? No. The police are at the Burrs’ house. So the studio will move up the shooting at their third location, the place Hanna secured for them, the living room at the Homestead Museum. They will do the children’s clothes there on Friday—if the police are through there. Leah will rent a Santa Claus and the children will sit in his lap. But will the little ones eat what we prepare? Who knows?” He exhaled in disgust. “The models complain the meals are too fattening. Rufus Driggle, the handyman? He likes the blond one, Yvonne. But Yvonne does not like Rufus. Someone put pickles on my crab cakes. But they always want my food. They are pigs.”