Slumber Party Potatoes
4 large baking potatoes
2 tablespoons (¼ stick) butter
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon chicken broth granules
1½ cups milk
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese
1 pound fresh broccoli, trimmed of stems and separated into florets, lightly steamed
1 pound thick-sliced bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Scrub and prick the potatoes in 3 or places with a fork. Bake them for about 1 hour, or until flaky.
While the potatoes are baking, melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat. Stir in the flour; cook and stir just until the flour bubbles, 2 or 3 minutes. Add the chicken broth granules, stir, and then gently whisk in the milk. Heat and stir constantly over medium heat until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the cheese and stir until it melts, 2 or 3 minutes.
Split each of the hot potatoes in half and place them on a platter. Place the steamed broccoli florets and chopped bacon into bowls. Pour the cheese sauce into a large gravy boat. Diners serve themselves assemblyline style, ending with the cheese sauce.
Makes 4 to 8 servings
I cut a stick of butter in half and set it to melt in another pan for the cheese sauce. Had there been a tidbit of gossip André was waiting to share with me—something that had made someone on the set dislike Leah enough to try to kill her? I turned that over in my mind for a moment, and discarded it. Any gossip he had, he would have told me instantly as soon as the paramedics left on Friday, when we worked together. That day, instead, he’d clucked sympathetically to Sylvia’s tale of woe about the robbery. He’d talked to Julian about his work with the Resistance during the war, and helped us prepare and serve the coffee break goodies. What else? André had gasped later in the morning. I’d thought he was having another attack. But he hadn’t been.
I quickly grated a heap of Cheddar cheese. What had immediately preceded this appearance of a seizure at the museum? He’d been staring with a disconcerting intensity at the smashed cupboard which had held the missing cookbooks. What else? He had read Charlie Smythe’s letter to Winnie from Leavenworth. So what?
I stirred flour into the butter for a roux, and waited until that mixture bubbled over low heat. Gently cook the flour, André had admonished me so many times, gentleness is one of the secrets of the sauce. I added seasonings and hot milk to the roux and delicately whisked the sauce. Outside, Tom’s car turned into the driveway. I stirred the cheese into the thickened sauce and watched it turn golden.
“Oh, Mom, thanks!” cried Arch, dashing into the kitchen. “Slumber Party Potatoes, and we’re not even having a slumber party!”
Tom kissed and hugged me and announced that he’d had plenty to eat, and that he had some work to do in the kitchen. Was there any way Arch and Julian and I could eat outside? Arch said he needed to feed Jake and Scout and give them fresh water. Julian quickly offered to help me set up on the deck. When we finally had scraped the outdoor chairs together, covered the picnic table with a bright tablecloth, set out silverware, plates, bowls of crisp bacon, steamed broccoli, hot cheese sauce, and steaming potatoes, Julian abruptly declared that he needed a break and was going to go back to the rec center to swim laps. He left without eating a bite.
I raised my eyebrows at Arch, who had finished his animal care duties. “Any reason for the sudden interest in swimming?”
Arch dabbed cheese sauce on half a potato and licked his fingers. “Rustine’s not there, if that’s what you’re asking, Mom. Rustine said there was too much chlorine in the pool, and it would wreck her hair, so she didn’t go in. Neither did Julian. And Lettie saw some friends from school, so she didn’t really talk to me very much.”
“Arch,” I said, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Oh, brother. Now what?”
“Did you print out my client list and all my schedules, assignments, and prices for your father?”
“No! No way!”
“Did you print it out for anybody?”
“Yeah,” he said immediately. “That guy who’s trying to do Dad’s finances? Hugh Leland? Mr. Leland called when you were on a job. He said he couldn’t figure Dad’s portion of my tuition at Elk Park Prep While he was in jail until I faxed him a copy of your client list and prices, to verify that you couldn’t pay the tuition.”
“Arch, that is complete baloney. Your dad pays the tuition, as ordered by the court.”
“Well, that’s not what Mr. Leland said, Mom.”
“Please, hon. Please don’t give out any information about me, or us, or the business, to anyone.” I heard the sharpness in my voice, but couldn’t suppress it.
“I’m sorry.” Arch looked stricken. “I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do, Mom.”
I swallowed my anger. Despite what he had done, it was impossible to blame my son: He’d just been trying to help. And yet, John Richard’s ability to manipulate him appalled me. I glanced upward, trying desperately to think of something else to talk about. On the roof, Arch’s ham radio antenna still dangled like a forgotten spider web. “How was Lettie’s ham radio set? Did it work any better than yours?”
Arch set his plate aside, the food virtually untouched. “Look, Mom, I know you really want me to be happy and all that, but don’t ask me a bunch of questions about Lettie, okay? Please?”
“Sure.” He was at an age where trying to establish a conversation was as treacherous as navigating a mine field. I was forever veering away from one subject where I was tempted to give advice, to another, where I would have to bite my tongue not to lecture. I looked up again at the forlorn antenna, the remnants of Arch’s first obsession with high-tech encryption. Wait a minute.
Arch had always been fascinated by a bit of history told him by Julian, whose adoptive parents in Utah had taught him to speak Navajo. During the Second World War, Navajos serving in the American military had spoken in their own language, over the radio, to other Navajo soldiers, who’d passed on details of troop movements and other matters of military importance to Allied military intelligence. Navajo is one of the most difficult languages in the world. It was a code never broken by the Germans.
What was the one thing everyone said about Charlie Smythe? He was a signalman for the Confederacy….
Rabbi Horowitz had told us: The Resistance … taught codes to all their trainees.
One of the secrets of the sauce … André had never seen the cookbook or the letter in the wall. But he had seen the enigmatic letter from Leavenworth, the later letter Charlie Smythe had written to his wife … not the earlier letter, which had remained hidden in the wall all these years.
“Arch,” I said suddenly. “You know your work with telephone encryption? Did you ever learn any codes that are universal? I mean, besides Morse.”
He eyed me. “There are codes and ciphers that have been used over and over. But the question isn’t whether you can put something into a code, Mom. The question is whether the person receiving it can understand it.” He pushed his glasses up his nose and tilted his chin. “Why?”
“If I showed you a letter that a man wrote from prison, that might be in a fairly common code, do you think you could read it?”
“Is it in English?” he asked dubiously.
I told him that it was and ran inside for my file. When I handed Arch the photocopy of Charlie Smythe’s letter to his wife from prison, he pondered it, chewed his tongue, then reread the paper in his hands. He did not know that Winnie Smythe, incapacitated by stroke, probably never had understood the letter. He did not know the history of the Smythe cabin. He did not know about the aborted remodeling work that Gerald Eliot had begun there. So it was with true astonishment that I heard Arch’s next set of questions.
“So. Did this woman, Winnie, tear out her kitchen wall? Did she use a”—he peered down at the letter—“cookery book? Is that a cookbook?” I
nodded, speechless. “And let’s see—this guy’s gun? To find some treasure?”
“Show me,” I whispered.
“It’s a real common code, Mom. It’s one a lot of prisoners used over the years, because it usually gets past censors.” He pointed to the paper and I read it again.
My Dear Wife,
You must know how very much I love you, and how I would tear out my Heart to see you again. To get to my cell, I pass a wall in which I have tried to carve your name. I remember our cabin Kitchen with its smell of Bread and Pudding, how you would use Cookery to show your love for me. I have only read one book. Sky here is seldom seen. I long for our bed, children, Family tales, rifle, horses, Cabin, and beautiful land where I believed to find Riches. One day, my Love. Your Loving Husband
Arch said, “You just read the first two words in each line. So it’s: You must tear out wall in cabin kitchen use cookery book skytales rifle find riches.” He paused. “Did this lady know the code?”
“No. At least, I don’t think so.” If she had been able to act on the letter, Winnie would surely have found the precious rifle her husband had so carefully hidden in the wall. “What’s a skytale?”
“It’s another way of encoding a message, Mom. It’s been used for a really long time. Say you have a message. You write it on a long, thin piece of paper. That’s called the plaintext, that you wrap around a cylinder of a certain size; that’s called a skytale. But on your plaintext, you put lots of numbers or letters in between your message, so that nobody can read what you’re saying, see? The person who’s decoding the message rolls your sheet of letters or numbers around the skytale cylinder. Then the extra numbers or letters aren’t seen. Just the one line of letters is seen, and that’s your message. Get it? The trick, once you have a strip of paper, is to know which cylinder to roll it around.”
I remembered Rustine’s copy of the note in the wall: Make the Rolls as I showed you. It wasn’t bread Smythe referred to, but strips of paper. I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Arch asked, “Do you have the cookbook?”
“I have a copy. There are letters written on two of the pages. They must form the strip of words, somehow.” My heartbeat sounded loud in my ears.
“What about this rifle?”
“It’s up at the cabin where I’m catering tomorrow. Where André was working.” I did not add when he died.
My son’s eyes were solemn. “Do you think Chef André knew the code in the letter from prison?”
I remembered André gasping, staggering, looking triumphant and secretive when he read the letter. “Yeah, I do.” And he needed money, I added mentally; he’d complained about his wife’s bills and the cost of living in Aspen Meadow. The chance of finding a treasure isn’t something he would have told me about. Besides, he just didn’t know how much money, or how little, might be hidden out at the Smythe cabin. But he’d taken a crowbar with him to the cabin and tried to get behind the kitchen wall. And someone had discovered him, I was convinced.
“What about Leah Smythe?” Arch asked. “Do you think she read it and that’s why the flat fell on her?”
I let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know, Arch. Hon, don’t worry about it. André was getting on in years and had heart problems. I think a clamp came loose somehow and Leah was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” If I focused on the possibility of danger at a site, Arch would fret about my catering away from home. His fear would not be expressed in begging me to stay home, but only in pained looks and agonized questions: When will you be back? What if something goes wrong? In addition to all my other problems, I did not want to worry that Arch was anxious about my safety.
Arch had turned away to look at a butterfly perched on the deck railing. It was a monarch. The butterfly clapped its black-edged, dark orange wings slowly, soundlessly, before lifting from its perch and drifting down to die picnic table.
“It’s lost,” Arch announced. He pressed his lips together. “So. Do you want me to look at these two cookbook pages? I could see if I could cut it into plaintext to wrap around a skytale for you, if you want.”
“Sure.” I scrambled up. “That would be fun. Maybe you and Tom could do it together.”
“The two of you seem pretty excited,” Tom said when we came into the kitchen. “Why don’t you let me do these dishes? You guys go get an ice cream in town.”
“Forget the dishes,” I told him. “Arch has just figured out an interesting aspect of the Smythe history.”
I grabbed the pages of letters from the bread and pudding recipes in The Practical Cook Book, and began to make copies with my fax machine. Through the evening, Tom, Arch, and I photocopied, cut, and taped together strips. We made strips of the letters horizontally, vertically, and sideways. My kitchen began to look as if a confetti parade had marched through a bomb site. Finally we had several dozen strips constructed. While Tom pried open the garage wall and pulled out his Winchester ‘94,1 brought a sour cream coffee cake out of the freezer to defrost for the next day’s catering.
We took turns wrapping strips one way and the other around the rifle. It took us hours to assemble long and short lines of nonsense. Julian came home and joined us, asking questions, offering suggestions, sharing our excitement.
Finally, close to exhaustion and ready to concede defeat, Arch had the idea to make a strip from all the vertical rows of letters on the Parker House Rolls and the bread pudding pages, and wrap them around the rifle’s magazine, the ammunition-storage cylinder under the barrel. This gave him a very long string of letters, the longest yet.
“Hold on,” Arch ordered. The slippery fax paper scritched and slid across the gray metal of the gun as Arch nudged it into place. Then, triumphantly, he showed us Charlie’s message to his wife.
UNDER THE ELEPHANT ROCK.
Chapter 23
“Well, I am impressed.” Tom patted Arch on the back, and he beamed. “And I know that when Sylvia Bevans hears that Leah might loan her museum a stash that’s been buried for eighty-some years, even she will be ecstatic.”
Arch’s face fell. “You mean we don’t get to keep whatever’s there?”
Tom, Julian, and I laughed. I told him if there was anything there, it would belong to the robbery victims’ descendants, if any could be found. Arch asked if he could call Lettie to tell her the news. No way, Tom informed him, you can’t tell anybody. Disappointed, but still savoring the victory of breaking the codes, Arch retired to his room with Julian to play music. Listening to the muffled thud of rock-and-roll, I took a hot bath and thought about the painful events of the past eleven days.
“You know I’m going to have to report what Arch figured out,” Tom told me, joining me later in the bedroom.
He had taken a shower after my bath, and now rubbed his wet, sandy-colored hair with a towel. The room was luminous with moonlight. Outside, a breeze shuffled the pines. It was late, and I was bone-tired.
“Of course. But at the moment, no one knows except us.” I patted the clean sheets, made lustrous in the creamy light. “I have one day of catering left at the cabin.”
The bed creaked as Tom got in. He pulled me close. “Uh, Miss G.? You should cancel for tomorrow.” He kissed my ear and I shivered. “And if you must go, Boyd’s coming with you again, no argument. Somebody on that photo shoot could be, probably is, a killer.”
“Listen. I know something now. And what it is, I think, is the location of some very valuable jewelry, plus about five hundred dollars in cash, heisted from the last stagecoach to run in Yellowstone Park.” Tom’s embrace muddled my thinking, but I didn’t mind. “All hidden away,” I pressed on, “by a guy who was a signalman, a thief, and a rotten father.”
He kissed my neck. “You’re changing the subject.”
“Wait. You’re making it hard for me to think. What else I know is that someone is trying to sabotage my food. I need to figure out who it is, or face a risk whenever I do a booking.”
His hands touched the small of my back
and I nuzzled against him. “Goldy, stop nosing around in old crimes. Just finish your job.”
“I might say the same for you, Mr. Contractor.”
He groaned. “Don’t joke.”
I kissed him. “I’m not.”
And then we made love, and for a While, I forgot all my problems, even my wrecked kitchen.
A brief rain shower swept in very early the next morning. When I looked out, the leaves on the neighborhood aspen trees sparkled and drooped with their weight of water. Freshly stretched from yoga, and dressed in my caterer’s uniform, I swallowed a few greedy breaths of cold, moist air before shutting the window.
Coffee break and lunch. I had the coffee break food ready to go—defrosted sour cream coffee cake, Cointreau French toast, strawberry and banana kabobs, cottage cheese mixed with mandarin oranges. For lunch, we would be serving an array of cold cuts and brioche. Julian had promised to make a soup and salad. We were also thawing some Blondes’ Blondies made earlier in the week, while I turned over ideas on how to catch a saboteur. In that department, I’d had a couple of thoughts during the night.
When I entered the cluttered, unfinished kitchen, Julian immediately handed me a hot espresso dosed with cream. I took the coffee with my usual gratitude. Through the trio of glittering new windows, I watched Jake and Scout cavort in the bloodhound version of cat-and-mouse. It was as if the move into colder weather brought out more energy in the animals: Have fun now, before two feet of snow prevent us from romping around. The delicious smell of baking puff pastry made me turn around.
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