Prime Cut gbcm-8

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “It’s okay,” I said stoically.

  “You know about Weezie?” she asked tentatively. “You know who’s picking her up?”

  “She’s celebrating something,” I replied dully. “And no, I don’t know who’s picking her up.”

  “Better come look out the dining room window.”

  Marla and I went back to the dining room and peered through the wavy glass. A dark Furman County government car had pulled in front of the museum. Weezie ran out to it as a short man with strawberry-blond hair emerged from the car. The two embraced. The man was Assistant District Attorney Andy Fuller.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said to Marla, my eyes fixed on the embracing duo.

  “The day Gerald Eliot’s body was found? Fuller and Weezie got engaged.”

  Chapter 14

  I walked quickly to the kitchen and scrubbed viciously at the scarred countertops. Why hadn’t Weezie told me about her engagement? Perhaps she thought I knew. Maybe she didn’t like me anymore; maybe I was just being paranoid. After all, I was catering her birthday party the next day. Still, you’d think she would have mentioned her upcoming nuptials, if only to refer to catering the wedding reception….

  “I’m sorry,” Marla murmured.

  “Me, too,” said Julian.

  “I doubt Andy Fuller has any say over who caters the Soiree,” I said unconvincingly. I looked at Marla’s sad, round face and Julian’s square-jawed, stoic expression. “Will you two quit?” I demanded. I grabbed the platter of puddings. “I’m going to tell the museum people we’re leaving.” I rushed out of the kitchen, desperate to be away from them and their pity.

  The dining room was empty except for a couple of dirty champagne glasses. I passed the living-room fire place where Santa and the child models had posed so unhappily, and arrived at the doorway to the historical society office.

  “Hi,” I said brightly to a volunteer worker with buckteeth and loopy brunette curls. Four plump mixed-breed dogs lay coiled on the floor. The canines scrabbled to their feet at the sound of my voice and wagged happy tails. A plastic gate barred the entrance of the office. Probably this was to keep the dogs from wandering through the museum. “Uh,” I said, and offered the volunteer the leftover puddings, “I’m Goldy, one of the caterers from the party. These are for you.”

  The woman spoke lovingly to her dogs. Denied immediate access to dessert, all four grunted and flopped around her desk. “Thanks, nice to meet you.” She bit into a pudding and looked ruefully down at her pets. “Mm-mw. Sorry about my sweethearts here. Sylvia puts up with them so I’ll come in and do her paperwork.”

  “My helper and I just wanted to let you know we’re leaving.”

  “Okay! I’m Annie,” she said brightly. “The back door is self-locking. Sylvia is out talking to a group of fourth graders in the parking lot, or I know she’d be in here thanking you.” She munched the pudding. “Did I ever need a break! This is super! Here, sweeties, taste this yummy treat.” The four canines scrambled to their feet. At least someone was eager to sample my cooking, I thought bitterly, then scolded myself for being a bad loser.

  “Well, good.” If she needed a break, maybe she wanted to have a chat. “So … what kind of work do you do here?”

  “Oh,” Annie replied in a friendly tone, “writing letters asking for money. Sometimes asking for a historical item.” She shared another cupcake-sized pudding with her dogs as she talked. Sylvia would have a stroke when she saw the mess the food was making on the floor. “Or answering a question about one.”

  “Really! I catered here last Friday—”

  “With the chef who had the heart attack! Were you close?” Her breath whistled between her gaping teeth.

  “We knew each other,” I replied noncommittally. “Actually, I’m friends with the Burrs, too. I just … can’t accept that Cameron strangled Gerald Eliot here, just because Gerald was behind on a remodeling. It’s not the kind of thing you think of the president of a historical society doing.”

  “Oh, I know, no way.” The shiny bark-colored curls flapped as she shook her head. “Old Cameron has a temper, that is true. I’ve seen him lose it at historical society meetings enough. And I guess he and Gerald could have broken the exhibit cases when they were fighting. But why would Cameron ruin display cases that he’d donated to the museum?”

  “To make it look as if he didn’t do it?”

  She shrugged skeptically. We both hesitated. I leaned back on a closet, trying to appear relaxed. In truth I was tense about being once again in the gray area between interest and nosiness. There was an item I wanted, and I didn’t know how convincing a lie I could develop on short notice to get it. “Since you mention André, the chef who died, I was wondering about something he mentioned … a photocopy of The Practical Cook Book? The reason I’m asking is that … I’m doing a party tomorrow for a member of the historical society. So I need to troll for authentic historic recipes. Any chance you’d let me borrow the photocopied version of The Practical Cook Book? To get ideas?”

  “Well …” Annie cocked her head and gave me a doubtful look. “I’m really not supposed to let a whole facsimile go out, although Sylvia was going to make an exception for André. We could wait to ask her. But I don’t know how long that would take. If you told me a recipe or two you liked, maybe I could help you—”

  Ah, bureaucrats. “No, that’s okay,” I interjected as I backed away from the half-gate. The four overweight dogs watched me greedily, perhaps hoping I’d accidentally drop a bread pudding. “I’ll just go to the library,” I tossed over my shoulder to Annie. Of course, I had no intention of doing any such thing.

  “Isn’t this pudding to die for, sweeties?” I heard Annie call cheerfully as I departed.

  When Tom heard us drive in, he put his special crumb-covered crab cakes into the oven. As soon as we had our boxes unpacked and ourselves cleaned up, we were digging into hot, crispy, divinely spicy little cakes. I said a prayer of thanks that I had such a wonderfull husband … and that fish, owing to a doctor’s warning that he wasn’t getting close to enough protein, was now occasionally included in Julian’s diet. We raved over the crab cakes and had seconds. I stretched the truth and said the tasting party hadn’t been too bad. Just as I was actually beginning to forget the wretched day I’d had, however, the lights flickered, went out, then flickered on again. Tom announced he had to check the fuses. He’d been working on the kitchen’s electrical outlets during the day, he told us cheerfully.

  I rinsed our dishes and told Julian he had to take a break. What I didn’t say was that if he wanted to cure the loneliness he’d felt so keenly in college, he needed to go out and make friends. Hopefully friends of the female variety. Thanks to my experience with Arch, however, I’d learned long ago not to give advice to young people. The lights flickered and went out. Great. I wondered how we’d manage to prep Weezie’s party in the morning without electricity.

  The lights came back on. Then they went out again. “It’s okay!” Tom called from the basement. “I’ve turned the power off!”

  “No problem!” I called back cheerily, then groaned.

  “Where’s Arch?” Julian asked. He glanced anxiously around the kitchen space, as if he couldn’t bear a moment with nothing to do.

  “In town,” Tom supplied as he returned with a handful of tools. He frowned at the first set of electrical outlets. “Having hot dogs with a couple of eighth graders in front of the Grizzly Saloon. If you’re wanting company, they’d probably enjoy chatting with a college student.”

  “Tom,” I reprimanded when Julian banged out the front door. “That wasn’t very sensitive.”

  He put down his screwdriver and frowned at the outlet. “Sorry. But the kid has to kick back a litlle. AU he does is work, with occasional bursts of so-called relaxation when he swims a hundred laps all by his lonesome. I only said he should walk into town and maybe meet up with Arch. It’ll be good for him. Besides, I need to talk to you.”

  “We do need
to talk,” I agreed. I pulled unsalted butter and eggs out of the dark refrigerator. “But I lied about the electricity being no problem. If you’re done with those outlets, I need you to turn the power back on so I can make Weezie’s birthday cake.”

  To avoid another disagreement, he trundled off silently to do as bidden. The lights blinked back on as I readied my recipe for orange poppy seed cake, Weezie’s favorite.

  On his return, Tom pulled out a metal tape measure and extended it across the floor with a clinging thwack.

  “Speaking of lying,” I said casually, “how did the polygraph go?”

  “Ah, so you ferreted that out. Well, don’t know yet about the results. But I did speak to Sheila about the autopsy. Looks like André somehow burned himself, had some chest pain, then took an overdose of his nitroglycerin, maybe because he was confused. Apparently, he was extremely sensitive to the nitro. I know you know how nitroglycerin works, opens the blood vessels to the heart. He took too much and his blood pressure crashed. The cops interviewed the photo people. Everyone at Ian’s Images feels bad. They claim to have loved André.”

  “Right.” But of course none of this was right. On Friday, the paramedics had mentioned that André’s sensitivity to his medication had made him reluctant to take any, even at the first sign of symptoms. On the other hand, maybe these symptoms had been much worse, and he had indeed become confused…. “What caused the burn marks?” I asked.

  Tom snapped the measure; it slithered back into its chrome housing. “The guys who secured the scene couldn’t find a pan or burner that exactly matched the curve of the burns on André’s hands. They found his empty bottle of medication. But there’s no indication of foul play, and it’s not a suspicious death. So they’re not going to pursue it.” He cracked the tape across the floor the other way. “End of story.”

  I sifted flour and shook my head. “Come on, Tom. On Friday André’s his usual temperamental self. The following Monday he uncharacteristically burns himself with no-one-knows-what, then takes an overdose of a medication to which he knows he’s extremely sensitive? And Sheila says that’s the end of the story?” I set the beater to whip the egg whites. Delicately scented strands of orange zest curled onto my cutting board as I reminded myself that Tom was not the enemy.

  He finished his measuring and scribbled numbers into his trusty spiral notebook. “Sheila’s not done, of course, but she’s probably going to rule the death an accident. They’ve put one investigator on it and he agrees.” He pocketed his measure and notebook and enclosed me in a bear hug. “I thought you should know. I’m not saying it’s right.”

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  As he traipsed back down into the depths of the basement, I scraped the light, seed-specked batter into a buttered pan and set it in the oven. The kitchen clock indicated it was exactly four o’clock. After a moment’s hesitation, I reached for the phone and punched in the number of the morgue. I counted it a blessing that I was only put on hold four times while waiting to get through to Sheila O’Connor.

  “Listen,” I began breathlessly after identifying myself. “André was extremely careful about his pills. And I think it’s really odd that he would have burned himself—”

  “Goldy, please. You always think that something’s suspicious—”

  “No, please,” I interrupted, although I knew Sheila’s scenario of burn, symptoms, overdose, hypotension, death, was not impossible. I took a deep breath. “I was at a tasting party today, a contest between caterers for a big booking. André was supposed to be there, but he wasn’t, of course. He probably would have won. The other caterer, Craig Litchfield, is a real scumbag.”

  “Goldy, I’m not the one—”

  I took another steadying breath, inhaling the tart-sweet orange scent, and ordered myself to be patient. “But you are the one, Sheila. If you rule Andre’s death an accident, no one at the department will do anything. Tom’s not allowed to poke around. He certainly doesn’t want me to go out to the cabin to nose around the kitchen—”

  “You’d better not,” she cautioned.

  “So when was the last time anyone out at the cabin saw André alive?”

  “Friday. André called Rufus Driggle on Sunday night and asked to be let in early to do some prep work. Rufus opened the gate for him at about seven, and then left to get film. The cabdriver confirms the gate was open when they arrived. When Rufus came back at nine, André was already dead.”

  “And Pru didn’t tell you he’d burned himself over the weekend?”

  “Nope. I asked her specifically.”

  “Is anybody at Ian’s Images admitting they were out at the cabin early Monday?”

  “No.”

  “All right then, listen to this,” I went on urgently. “Within an hour of Pru leaving the morgue, Craig Litchfield practically broke down her door, trying to buy André’s client list and recipe book. The guy is bad news, Sheila. I wouldn’t put anything past him. Where was Litchfield early Monday morning when André died? Has anybody asked?”

  “Goldy, look. I like you and trust you. So I’m going to tell you that Craig Litchfield called Andy Fuller yesterday and complained that you should be investigated. I only know because Andy ran it by me. I told him it was nonsense, just sour grapes from one of your competitors. But Litchfield said you can’t deal with competition. He told Andy about some incident with a cake plate?” I groaned. “Litchfield claims you were at the Hibbard house yourself trying to get the clients and the recipes, and that you knew Andre’s schedule, so you had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill him.”

  Stunned, I was speechless for a moment. “Sheila, you know I went to be with Pru. And André’s always given me all the recipes I’ve ever asked for. Fuller can’t, the department can’t—”

  “Of course not, and that’s exactly what I told him. But you see how it looks. So if you’d rather not be investigated as the leading suspect in a homicide case, you’d better let me close the books on André Hibbard’s death as an accidental overdose of nitroglycerin. An accidental death, Goldy,” she said meaningfully. “Now, please, I have a ton of work. I have to go.” She hung up.

  I cursed silently and stared at the kitchen timer as it ticked down to the cake being done. Think, I told myself. First Gerald Eliot, then André. You don’t just have two unexplained deaths like this, with so many connections and yet no connections….

  The cake was almost done; the oven would still be hot; I decided to make us an early dinner. Anyway, I thought better when I cooked. How about a rich Mexican torte layered with chiles, Fontina cheese, and tortillas—a creamy entrée even a vegetarian could love? I grated cheese and chopped chiles, and as I did, I reconstructed what I knew.

  Gerald Eliot had been doing his usual on-again, off-again remodeling work at the Merciful Migrations cabin. And for Cameron Burr. And for me. Supposedly, he’d been having an affair with the one-name model, Rus tine. And he had been working as a security guard at the museum, where he’d been killed, and from where his body had been moved. There had been a burglary at the museum. Or had there? Annie-the-volunteer-secretary had insisted Cameron Burr wouldn’t have made it look as if a burglary had occurred, when his real motive was murder.

  I beat eggs with half-and-half I didn’t know what the motive was, didn’t even know which crime had come first, the murder or the burglary. Nor did I know how the strange death of André—who’d incomprehensibly asked for a copy of the one cookbook that had been stolen and was still missing—was related to either. But I owed it to André to answer all these questions. If only I could snoop around at that damn cabin! But I couldn’t, at least not yet. Right now, the only thing that might help would be to have a look at some evidence, or facsimiles of evidence. I slid the cake out, turned the temperature down slightly, put the torte in, and set the timer for forty minutes. Then I ran upstairs to get the white gloves I’d bought to wear to Arch’s confirmation.

  It shouldn’t take me that long to break into the museum, I reflected as
I hustled out to the van with the gloves tucked in my pocket. After all, they no longer had a security guard. And because that very afternoon, after the tasting, I’d duct-taped over the Homestead kitchen door’s so-called self-locking mechanism.

  The museum closed at five, so the parking lot was predictably empty. Still, I exhaled in relief. I pushed open the door I’d rigged and strode purposefully into the kitchen, trying not to think of what Tom would say if he knew what I was doing. My story, just in case I was caught, was that I’d left a baking pan in the kitchen. Which I had, just before I’d taped the door.

  Tom had told me that the forcible entry on the night of Gerald Eliot‘s death had been through the front door, which opened onto a reception area adjoining the octagonal living area, at the opposite end of the museum. Wouldn’t the president of the historical society have had keys to that door? Maybe, maybe not, since the museum was government property. On the other hand, the president of the historical society would certainly have figured out how to break through the kitchen, wouldn’t he? I didn’t know. Nor did I know whether the intruder had been deliberately lying in wait for Gerald Eliot to make his rounds, as Andy Fuller contended. Was it possible Gerald surprised someone in the middle of a burglary?

  I trotted into the dining room. This was where the struggle and strangling had taken place. I looked carefully past the police ribbons. Tiny shards of glass were still visible in the doorframes of the two violated display cases.

  My watch indicated I’d been away from the house for fifteen minutes. In my mind’s eye, the rich, creamy custard in our oven began to puff. The cookbooks … Where was the photocopy Sylvia had made for André from the files? No telling. And why would he want it, anyway? Wasn’t what was valuable the cookbook itself?

  Well. I knew enough from working as a docent here that it was possible to find what I wanted. And what I wanted was what André had requested, although I didn’t have a clue why he’d requested it. I walked quickly to the historical society office, which smelled distinctly of dog, and scrutinized the four file cabinets.