Prime Cut gbcm-8

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I shrugged. It was time to get ready for Andre’s service. I made a slick fax-copy of the note for my own file. It wasn’t ideal, but with needing to shower and change, I didn’t have time to go to the library and photocopy more copies of stolen historical documents.

  In a black Chanel suit and spectator pumps, her freshly coiffed curls tucked behind rhinestone-and-onyx earrings, Marla had morphed back to her old self when I found her in the parking lot of St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church. The rain had stopped, but my irascible friend lofted her Louis Vuitton umbrella over her head in triumph.

  “I’m done, I’m finished!” she sang. Her peaches-and-cream complexion was flushed with joy. She bustled up to my van. “The IRS guys left today, saying I’d hear from them soon. I said, ‘How ’bout never?’ They weren’t amused. But here’s the deal: they think I’m going to get a refund!”

  I hugged her tightly and felt unexpected tears burn. “Oh, Marla. I’ve missed you so much. And there’s something I have to tell you, but you weren’t feeling well, and I wanted to wait until your audit was over, because—”

  “Calm down, will you? I can’t listen to whatever it is until I’ve had some food. Let’s see if the guys from Andre’s old restaurant have any goodies set up yet. Where’s Arch?”

  “Tom’s bringing him. And the food is for afterwards!”

  “You want my stomach to growl through the service?” she threatened as she linked her arm through mine and led me up the steps. “Have to tell you, Goldy, one of those IRS agents was kind of cute.” Her voice turned wistful;. “I suppose it’s unethical for him to date an accused tax-chiseler…. And if he did ask me out, I’d have to wonder. I mean, now he knows I’m rich.”

  We entered the parish hall, a long, vaulted-ceiling addition to the ultramodern church. The enticing scents of roasted ham, chicken, pork, and beef wafted toward us. My heart tugged as I waved at two of the servers I knew from the old restaurant days with André. After Marla had deftly nabbed a couple of what looked like André’s Grand Marnier Buttercream Cookies, I steered her into the stone vestibule. There, lanky, balding Monsignor Fields talked in a hushed tone with Pru Hibbard and Wanda Cooney.

  “What I want to tell you is this,” I whispered to Marla as she munched on her cookies. “John Richard has been, and is, trying to get revenge on us. He turned you in to the IRS before he went to jail, and he’s been bankrolling Craig Litchfield from jail.”

  Her beautiful brown eyes widened with shock. She swallowed the last mouthful of cookie. “Revenge on us? For what? That son of a bitch!” she hissed. “I’ll kill him!”

  “Don’t start!” I warned as I sent the startled monsignor a conciliatory nod. I tugged Marla into the airy, modern church. Because Saint Stephen had been martyred by stoning, the only decoration on the high, pale blue walls was a mass of irregular stone-shaped windows filled with pale blue stained glass. Light abruptly flooded the windows as the sun emerged from behind a cloud. The wall suddenly resembled a jeweler’s cloth strewn with aquamarines. “Look, Marla,” I said softly, “I just wanted you to know he’s being vengeful. In case anything else unexpected happens. Are you vulnerable in any other way?”

  “The hell with vulnerable.” She slid into a pew and smoothed the Chanel suit. “That creep has so much money to throw around, I’ll sue him myself. And don’t tell me you can’t sue somebody in jail, because I will find a way. Oh, I can’t wait.” She patted my knee. “Now, I have good news for you. Litchfield’s dinner for Weezie was dreadful. I know because I sneaked out on the IRS and went—as an invited guest, but of course as a spy, too, once I’d found out she’d canceled you. Anyway, he tried to cheat her—naughty, naughty. Weezie had ordered poached salmon from him. He made coulibiac, which everybody knows is a carbo-load made from bits of salmon sandwiched between crepes and covered with brioche. I heard that Weezie now suspects he had the salmon left over from another job. And get this: She wants Andy Fuller to investigate!”

  So. Maybe instead of bothering my husband, Andy Fuller would be investigating Craig Litchfield’s fraudulent use of salmon? Now that was what I called having bigger fish to fry, I thought, as an usher handed us each a service leaflet for the memorial service.

  “There’s more,” Marla whispered conspiratorially as the pews around us began to fill. “Weezie wanted a buffet. Craig insisted on a sit-down affair so he could limit portions. Worse, he inflated every dish with either frozen chopped spinach or—you’re going to die—bread stuffing. Even the pasta had bread crumbs in it.” She unsuccessfully suppressed a giggle. The woman on the other side of me looked up and glared. But Marla went on happily, “Edna Hardcastle is in for a huge surprise on Saturday. Maybe she’ll call and rehire you at the last minute.”

  “Maybe her daughter will cancel her wedding again.”

  Marla laughed out loud at the prospect of a wedding that might be postponed a third time; the woman glowered; I shrugged apologetically. Life in Aspen Meadow is never dull.

  Tom, Arch, and Julian slid in next to us. Pru had been accompanied by Wanda Cooney to the front. The widow had apparently made the decision not to have her husband’s coffin present. Arch gave my shoulder a quick squeeze when the organ began to play.

  An altar boy had opened the side door overlooking the mountains. A breeze scented with pine wafted over us. The huge church was about half filled with mourners, which I found gratifying. André had touched a number of people, despite his eccentric ways and long-winded tales of his own history, real or imagined. While the lessons from Isaiah and Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians were read, I prayed for my teacher. I gave thanks that he had given me the gift of cooking as a way to care for people. I gave thanks that he’d come into my life just when I’d needed him.

  The monsignor gave a brief homily on not fearing death. He took his seat, and the congregation waited. According to the service leaflet, a remembrance was to be offered by Rabbi Sol Horowitz. This was something I’d never heard of in a Roman Catholic church, and I mentally gave them points for open-mindedness. After a few moments, a stooped, white-haired man shook off offers of assistance and climbed to the pulpit.

  “The organist has agreed to help me,” the rabbi began in a heavy accent. We waited, but no music was forthcoming. The rabbi pursed his lips, looked out over the congregation, then opened a folded sheet.

  “This is my remembrance, from the time of the war.” Holding the sheet with one hand, he removed a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his forehead. “In my brother’s town of Clermont-Ferrand, André Hibbard was a fearless Resistance fighter, despite the fact that he was but eleven years old. Although André was a child, he hated the Nazis, and he helped my brother and his wife avoid deportation to the camps.” The rabbi faltered, then went on.

  “André Hibbard concealed my brother and his wife, an Italian Jew, in a barn. My brother was a violinist. Every day, André brought them cheese and milk.” The rabbi cleared his throat. “The Resistance was organized, and they taught codes to all their trainees. But André had no radio, of course. So when the trains to take the Jews away arrived, André Hibbard used music to alert my brother’s family. If there was danger, André would whistle ‘Für Elise’ to my brother.” Rabbi Horowitz waited While the rippling notes of Beethoven’s tune rolled through the blue-lit church.

  When the organ music faded, the congregation was still. Rabbi Horowitz went on: “One night, a man waited to take my brother and his family out, to try to get them to Switzerland, to safety. Andre’s job was to watch for the Nazis and whistle again to my brother’s family, to indicate it was safe to move. The tune he chose was from Felix Mendelssohn.”

  The entire congregation listened intently as the organ pealed forth with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Marla’s face brightened. Arch smiled broadly. The rabbi folded his paper and pocketed it with the handkerchief. He grinned and nodded down at us.

  “With the help of André Hibbard, my brother and his wife escaped to Zurich. After playing many years w
ith the Boston Symphony, my brother retired. Last year, he died. But he always made a good joke, about how the French boy fooled the Nazis, by using a Christian hymn to save a family of Jews.”

  The congregation broke into spontaneous applause as Rabbi Horowitz found his seat. Visibly moved, the monsignor led us through the Lord’s Prayer, the intercessions, additional prayers, and the final commendation and blessing. One of the cooks from André’s old restaurant led Pru down the nave. The congregation followed. As we all filed out, the organist broke into an enthusiastic, multiversed rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

  After the service, I dimly registered Monsignor Fields walking toward me across the church’s large patio. Marla was eating, but I couldn’t. I was sitting on the patio’s stone wall—in a state of shock, I think—realizing that the stories André had told, the stories that I’d doubted, that I’d only been half listening to—had been true. The monsignor interrupted my thoughts.

  “Pru is extremely tired. She does not want to stay for the reception, but she would like to visit with you at her condominium, if you feel up to driving out there.” He seemed almost apologetic.

  “I’d love to.”

  When I told Tom where I was going, he chuckled. “I told the boys this buffet food was it for dinner, so we’ll be here for a While.”

  On the way to Blue Spruce, dark-bellied clouds again gathered and spit raindrops on my van as I followed Wanda and Pru in Wanda’s Suburban. André had indeed been a Resistance fighter, I thought with newfound admiration. He was a genuine hero. I felt like a better person, just from knowing him. I turned on the wipers as the road snaked beside a creek edged with cottonwoods and will daisies bowed by the rain. A golden eagle soared gracefully downward, then skimmed the tops of the lodgepole pines before disappearing from view. I braked as Wanda slowed to enter the Blue Spruce Retirement Village.

  “I’m going to go take a shower, if you don’t mind,” Wanda confided once she had Pru settled on a chaise longue in her sitting room. We were standing in the small condo kitchen. “There’s something about a funeral that just … makes me want to get out of my clothes and start over.” She placed Andre’s old tea ball stuffed with leaves into one of the many teapots and checked the water she’d set on to boil. “You’ll tend to her if she needs anything? She just wanted to see you again, since you’ve called so many times.”

  “No problem,” I said softly. “It’s unlikely our visit will be disrupted by visitors this time. Has anyone called to bother you in the last week?”

  “Two more real estate agents appeared, plus that horrible caterer dropped by again.” She shuddered and carefully poured the steaming water over the tea ball. The scent of orange and black pekoe wafted upward. “I told Litchfield if he had the nerve to come here again I’d report him to the police. He hasn’t been back.”

  “Wanda,” I said suddenly as I glanced around the kitchen, “where are André’s cooking tools?”

  “You mean the ones he kept in his red box?” When I nodded, she answered, “The police brought them back, along with his apron and pans. Pru had me put them in the spare bedroom. Why?”

  “No reason.” I took the tray. “Thanks for the tea.”

  Pru was fast asleep by the time I returned to her sitting room. With her head tilted back, her mouth slightly open, she looked as young and innocent as a bride. I put the tray down and sat on an ottoman by the chaise lounge. When I heard the shower water running, I quickly went looking for the spare bedroom.

  It was upstairs, a spotless, sparsely decorated room featuring white curtains and chenille bedspreads. My heartbeat sped up as I pulled open the closet door and heard it creak. I held my breath; Wanda’s shower continued to run. André’s red metal chef’s toolbox had been placed on the floor of the closet.

  The old metal hinge squeaked when I cracked back the top. Again I froze and waited for some response in the house, but heard only running water. I opened the partitions of the box that I knew so well: butcher and paring knives, balloon whisks, can openers, butter-ball scoop, vegetable brushes and peelers, garlic press, spatulas of all sizes, old wooden spoons. Only one item was missing: André’s salamander.

  Although André had never used the bottom compartment for tools—he liked having his tools out where he could see them—I lifted the top layer just to see if I’d missed something. The spoons clanked and the metal layer scraped the sides of the box as I heaved the compartment free. When it was finally out, I gaped, uncomprehending, into the bottom of the box.

  There was what I sought: Andre’s salamander. But next to it was a tool I’d certainly never seen André use in a kitchen: a crowbar.

  Chapter 22

  What to do? My thoughts raced. I did a double-check of all the tools; nothing else was unusual or out of place. The water stopped. I hastily closed the box, slid it back into place, shut the closet door, and descended the stairs on tiptoe. Pru slumbered on. I poured two cups of ultrastrong room-temperature tea and slugged one down. When Wanda reappeared, I motioned toward Pru and then whispered that I would find my way out.

  I sprinted to the van and drove back to our house. Tom and the boys were not yet back from the reception. Hunger knotted my stomach. Cook, I told myself. That will help you figure this out.

  Cook? I surveyed the buckled rectangles of plywood that covered two thirds of the counter area; the rest was just gaping holes revealing cabinet drawers. The new floor, still unfinished, looked like it belonged in a barn. I did not have the foggiest idea where my recipes were, but I knew Arch well enough to predict that no matter how much food they had at the reception, he would want dinner. Not because he was hungry, but because the comfort of order, including meals served at regular times, had been one of the ways he’d restructured his universe after our family life had first fallen apart. So I decided to make Slumber Party Potatoes, his favorite.

  Within ten minutes, I had started bacon cooking, scrubbed four potatoes in the main-floor bathroom, shuttled them along with washed broccoli out to the kitchen, and placed them in the oven. I trimmed the broccoli stems and set them in a small amount of boiling water just as the thick slices of bacon began bubbling in my sauté pan. Despite a messed-up kitchen, despite Craig Litchfield’s attempts to undermine my business, I still loved to cook.

  Craig Litchfield. He’d shown up in the most unlikely places, including at André’s house the day he died. I knew he was a smarmy competitor, but was he engaged in something even more sinister than stealing clients? Someone was sabotaging my food up at the cabin. I was fairly certain the same vindictive prank had been played on André. Could the prankster be Craig Litchfield? Could Litchfield have been so insane as to get through the locked gate, or climb the fence of the Merciful Migrations property, to try to harm a competitor? Or could he have hired someone to do it? And could that person have meant merely to scare André and gone too far? I couldn’t believe that Craig Litchfield would be willing to take a homicide rap, but then again, as I’d learned so often with The Jerk, some folks won’t hesitate to use violence in order to get their way.

  I turned the sputtering bacon slices. Fat popped in the pan, and a tiny, stinging droplet spattered my forearm. I frowned and rubbed the spot. That first morning we had worked together at the cabin, André had given me such meticulous instructions in caramelizing—“burning sugar”—for that day’s dessert. He was always careful in the kitchen, citing tales of cooks who had sliced fingers or burned their hands or faces. He’d warned me repeatedly about burns. So, on the morning he died, I’d say the chances he had burned himself with his own salamander were slim, unless he had had cardiac symptoms while he was doing the caramelizing.

  I finished flipping the bacon and turned down the heat. So the burns on his hands still bothered me. What else? The fact that he was even preparing more crème brûlées that day was a puzzle. André always brought backup food. So why would he have been making still more crème brûlées in the kitchen? Had he come to the cabin to prep the fruit, and
then been told he needed to make a lot more custards? Who could have delivered this message, and when? Had that same person interrupted André as he was making the crèmes? Maybe even seen him using the fiery-hot salamander? And why had André, or someone else, hidden or stored the salamander and a crowbar in his toolbox? Had the crowbar been used as a weapon, or for something else?

  I turned off the heat under the broccoli and tried to envision André that last morning. Maybe he’d been working in the kitchen and heard somebody in the great room. Could he have seen someone tinkering with the flat that so nearly crushed Leah? Maybe he’d seen or heard something, picked up a crowbar, tiptoed out to the great room, and … And what? And tried to hurt somebody with it? What about the hot salamander? And the nitroglycerin? Were the slight bruises in his mouth nothing, as the coroner seemed to think? Or had someone forced him to swallow the pills?

  I drained the fragrant, sputtering bacon slices and the bright green steamed broccoli florets, and tried to construct a different scenario. What if André had brought the crowbar with him, in order to try to find something? That would surely explain why he’d come early, with all the food made in advance. But what would he have been seeking? André had never seen the letter hidden in the old wall, the letter which had pointed toward using Winnie’s stolen cookbook to make rolls. To find treasure. He had never shown the least interest in either American history or weapons, and it seemed highly unlikely he had any regard for Charlie Smythe’s old rifle. But he had had some glimmer of what was going on when he’d asked for a photocopy of Winnie Smythe’s cookbook. Why? What made the cookbook so important? If André had known something—something Gerald Eliot had known, too—what could it have been?

  Slumber Party Potatoes

  4 large baking potatoes

  2 tablespoons (¼ stick) butter

  3 tablespoons all-purpose flour