Hot Dish

by Brockway, Connie

  As soon as she’d left, Steve stood up, showering Bruno’s head with a lapful of cookie crumbs. Happily, Bruno didn’t share Steve’s complaints about the cookies; he began eagerly polishing the floor with his big pink tongue.

  “Can I have the tower room?” Steve figured his chances of getting that room rose tenfold as soon as Jenn, who he suspected often cast herself in the role of the Voice of Reason, left.

  Nina shook her head. “It’s not safe.”

  “Now that might be overstating things, Nina,” Cash said. “I don’t think it’s likely to fall through the ceiling or anything.” He didn’t look too certain. “But Jenn had a point. If something happened to you, our insurance premiums would be impossible to cover.”

  “I’ll sign a waiver.” Steve really wanted to stay in the tower. “Can I at least look?”

  “Ah, what the hell? Come on,” Cash capitulated. He pushed himself up from his chair and led the way toward a hall at the back of the kitchen. Nina stayed behind, but Bruno didn’t. He trotted behind Steve, his feet making a nice, little castanet sound against the floorboards.

  In the hall, Cash rolled back a pocket door, exposing a set of stairs so steep they could more appropriately be called a ladder. He motioned Steve forward. “After you. Just go right past the doors on the first and second floor, and when you can’t go any further, push on the ceiling. It’s a trapdoor.”

  “A trapdoor? That’s so Disney. I love it.” Steve headed up, Bruno climbing after him. “Can he come up?”

  “I wouldn’t let him,” Cash said. “Oh, he’ll make it up okay, but if the stairs are too steep for him to come down, you’re going to have to take care of him up there for the rest of his life. Malamutes leave crap piles the size of small dogs.”

  Steve looked down at Bruno’s head. It wasn’t far to look. It was next to his hip. Bruno smiled. “How much do you think he weighs?”

  “At least a hundred and fifty.”

  “I can do that.” Steve nodded. He probably could do that. He started climbing again. “And after we’re done here, can I see the Fancy Fowl? And the barn thing?”

  “You’re not a regular kinda guy, are you?” Cash asked.

  Steve, halfway up the first flight of stairs, looked over his shoulder. “Everyone experiments a little in college, Cash.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I meant you’re not … Forget it. That’s the trapdoor above you. Just give it a good push.”

  It was heavier than Steve would have imagined. After a few unsuccessful “pushes,” he gave up and braced his shoulders against the floor, pistoning up from his legs, all too aware of two sets of eyes—one masculine and one masculine canine—regarding him with a faint air of disappointment.

  Finally, the trapdoor broke free of whatever held it and popped open, flopping backward and bouncing against the floor. Steve looked down, wiggling his fingers invitingly as he gave the universal sign for “you can applaud now.” Bruno shot past him on the stairs and Cash, who had been peeling a fingernail as he waited on the landing below, started up.

  Steve climbed into the tower room, with Cash close behind. Bruno was already standing at one of the windows, front paws on the sill, ears alert as he surveyed the land below. The dog had paws the size of salad plates.

  The room was notable for the number of windows it contained, so many windows in fact that finding wall space to put the head of the brass bed against had proved impossible. Instead, it stood at an angle in the corner, flanked on either side by end tables. A single narrow chest of drawers crowded another bit of wall to the right of the door that led out to the small, prowlike balcony. Two serviceable-looking rocking chairs sat parallel to each other five feet apart, both facing out of their respective windows at the view below, their backs turned to the rest of the room, a low table set with a pair of binoculars between them.

  And then Steve’s gaze strayed out the window and stopped.

  Jenn was right. The view was breathtaking. He could see—well, not that far, because there were heavy banks of clouds hanging low in the sky, and the snow falling from them had obliterated the horizon, but he bet on a clear day you could see to Canada. Whichever direction that was. Beneath, the pine forest spread out in all directions, even surrounding the huge silvery disk of the lake. A couple snowmobiles chased each other across its surface like cars on a kid’s wind-up race track, following a graphite-colored track. Other than that, there was no evidence of another human being.

  There was no one out there.

  The sudden appreciation of their isolation hit Steve like a brick to the head.

  “There’s nothing to do here, is there?” he asked Cash.

  “We have satellite. And there’s Netflix.”

  “I mean out there.” Steve pointed at the nothing outside.

  “Of course, there is,” Cash huffed. “There’s snowmobiling and fishing and cross-country skiing, and when I get hold of the right investors, there’ll be one helluva golf course.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The people who live here. Not the vacationers. There’s nothing new for them to try. No new restaurants, no theaters, no bars, no dance clubs, no new galleries, no new shops, no new exhibits. There’s nothing new to draw them out of their houses or their yards.”

  “You have that right,” Cash agreed. He didn’t sound too put-out about it and Steve wondered if Jenn had ever noticed how content her father was in his exile. The old guy was walking gingerly along the perimeter of the room in increasingly tight concentric circles, testing the floorboards as he went.

  Cash had to be pushing eighty. When Steve was eighty, he’d be content not to be drooling, and yet old Cash had made it up those stairs with no more panting than Steve had done.

  “People raised on the plains never seem to like it much up here,” Cash was saying. “The way the trees close in on the roads and fill in all the empty places makes them feel claustrophobic.”

  Steve’s gaze drifted back out the window, a little uneasy, a little fascinated. It was like watching a horror film. You knew it was going to scare you but you watched anyway.

  “I’d like to buy the butter head.” The words just popped out before Steve had a chance to consider them. A flight-or-fight instinct, he supposed. Secure the butter head and run.

  Cash had found a suspect board near where Bruno stood and was rocking back and forth on it experimentally, one hand carefully clinging to the window jamb. He didn’t answer.

  “Whatever you feel is a fair price. Hell, fair price or not, I’ll pay it.”

  “Now, then, don’t go jumping the gun there.” Cash might have started life as a mover and shaker of industry, but it was pretty clear whatever he’d begun life as he was going to end it as a Son of the Nord Star. His accent might be a conglomeration of north and south, but the word choice and the rhythms said Minnesota. “If I was you, I’d wait and take a look at what you’re so eager to buy. Besides, I’m not sure Nina would sell.”

  “No matter what I paid? Why not?”

  “Hm.” Cash whipped a grease pencil out of his corduroy pocket, leaned down, and marked a big, thick X on the suspect floorboard. He straightened. “You know how moms keep the things their kids make—handmade cards, and macaroni art and programs from school plays and that kind of thing?”

  They did?

  “Well, Nina didn’t do much of that when Jenny was little. She was busy with other stuff. Charity work. Playing hostess for the company. We entertained a lot. Traveled even more. You know?”

  “What does that have to do with the butter head?”

  “I’ve lived here too long,” Cash said with a short, mind-clearing shake of his head. “I forget there’s a front door to every conversation. Nina doesn’t have anything from Jenny’s girlhood except that butter head.”

  Steve waited, listening carefully for some clue as to how he was going to talk Nina into giving up the butter head.

  “She was really proud Jenny won the Miss Fawn Creek pageant,” Cash went on. “It wasn�
��t just because she thought her daughter was beautiful. Most moms think that. It was because Jenny had set her mind on a goal and she went after it tooth and nail. We were both proud of her, trying to fit in and at the same time pay her own way through college. She never did fit in much here,” he said in a thoughtful voice. He looked up. “Anyway, that butter head is one of the only things Nina has from Jenny’s girlhood.”

  “But Jenny didn’t make the butter head,” Steve protested. “I did.”

  “Yes. But we didn’t have any senior pictures taken of Jenny. She wouldn’t hear of it. So the butter head is as close to it as we’ve got.”

  “Look, it’s not like you can hang it on the living room wall,” Steve said, confident such a reasonable argument would win over Cash. “What do you do, go out in the barn and visit it once a week?”

  “Of course not,” Cash said.

  “When was the last time you saw it?”

  “‘Bout four years ago.”

  “Then it shouldn’t make any difference to you if I own it. I’ll have a hologram made of it and send it to you.” He was flummoxed. Cash didn’t appear any closer to giving up the butter head than he had ten minutes ago.

  “Nina has every clipping covering Jenny’s pageants in an album. Not that she’s weird about it or anything. I mean, she doesn’t sit up at night, fondling the pages and dabbing at her eyes,” Cash said a little defensively, enough of a Minnesotan to consider sentimentality a no-no.

  “Okay.” For a minute, Steve considered telling Cash exactly why he wanted the butter head but if Nina Hallesby was sentimental about it, he doubted telling Cash his plans to open it up would convince him to part with it. He’d do better playing the roles of Artist and Creator. Besides, just because he wanted to lop off the back of its head didn’t mean he didn’t really want to see it first. But if it really meant something to Nina …

  Damn, he hated moral conundrums.

  “Anyway”—Cash discovered another floorboard, swooped down on it with the elan of Zorro marking an evildoer, and X’ed it—”I don’t know if Nina would sell it but you can always ask.

  “There.” Cash had finished checking off the floorboard and was looking around the rest of the room with a critical eye. “Whatcha think?”

  Steve considered. “It’s cold up here.”

  “Yup,” Cash said equitably. “And not likely to get much warmer. The place wasn’t exactly built to code. Whatever heat does get up here is jerry-rigged. I’d give you a space heater but the same goes for the wiring and you’d probably burn the whole place down.”

  “Can I have an extra blanket?” Steve asked.

  “Sure. Or”—he considered Steve critically—”you could take one of the bedrooms on the second floor. You can get to them by a regular staircase, they’re a lot warmer, and they have a more cozy feeling, having drapes and less windows and more furniture.”

  “No! I gotta stay here,” he said earnestly. “Please.”

  “Okay. But you’ll have to make up some sort of waiver clearly acknowledging that I told you not to step on the floorboards with the X’s and you understood the dangers and you agreed not to bring a space heater up here and that if you die your estate will not sue us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And if Bruno goes through the floorboards, you have to tell Heidi.”

  Steve looked at Bruno in delight. “He’s staying with me?”

  “Unless Heidi comes and gets him. He sure as hell isn’t staying with me. I already got a bed partner. And Jenny’s not a dog-in-bed type, you know.” He looked a little saddened by this, as if his daughter was denying herself one of life’s pleasures. Steve, who’d never slept with a dog in his bed, either, was more than willing to believe this.

  “I’ll write something up before dinner,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  5:45 p.m.

  The Lodge

  “You know” Steve said, “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you this, but I’m allergic to mushrooms.”

  Nina’s Fiberlicious Risotto was the dietary equivalent of a high colonic, a grayish heap of grains more uncooked than cooked, with sharp bits and scratchy pieces floating on top of it in a watery, flavorless broth. The only ingredient he was certain about was a leathery piece of mushroom. Thus, his sudden allergy.

  The Hallesbys, Steve decided, must have had cast-iron stomachs. Jenn was dutifully paring away at her mound while Cash, after one look at his plate, had donned the expression of a man determined, and pitched in, forking food slowly and methodically into his mouth.

  “Oh! Oh, dear,” Nina now exclaimed in alarm. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Across the table, Jenn, unconcernedly dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, set it down and asked, “Are you going into anaphylactic shock?”

  Nina’s alarm became outright agitation. “Should we call the ambulance?”

  Jenn pushed back her chair. “I’ll get Uncle Phillip’s beesting kit—”

  “No!” God, no. Steve hated needles. “No, that won’t be necessary. It’s not that kind of allergic reaction. I just break out. Hives. Itchy. Not dangerous.”

  “Oh, dear,” Nina said. “We have calamine lotion. Jenny, find the calamine—”

  “There’s no need.” Steve caught Jenny’s arm as she popped up to do her mother’s bidding with suspect alacrity. He caught a glimpse of her turned face. She was trying hard not to laugh. “I don’t think I had enough to cause a reaction.”

  With a look of disappointment, Jenn sat back down. He wouldn’t have recognized her as the sophisticated, well-groomed woman of this morning. She’d exchanged her corduroys for a pair of jeans and her silk blouse for a raspberry-colored waffle-knit long-john top. Her hair hung in soft waves just below her jaw, framing a face scrubbed clean of makeup. Her skin wasn’t perfection. There were laugh lines at the corners of her gray-blue eyes and just the very first hint of loosening along that strong jawline. A few freckles dusting the tops of her cheeks. Her nose was just a little asymmetrical and a tiny scar marked the bottom of her chin.

  He thought she looked great. Demeter after her first run-in with Hades: forceful, female, ripe but ripening still.

  She’d probably kill him if she knew what he was thinking.

  In his experience, women, especially women who made a living out of celebrity, hated being ripe. Which was too bad. He liked mature women. And it didn’t have anything to do with their vast wells of experience, wisdom, or endurance. He simply thought succulent was sexier than green.

  “Well, I can’t let you go hungry,” Nina was saying. “I’ll just scoot back in the kitchen and fix you something else. It won’t take but a few minutes.”

  “Mom,” Jenn said tentatively, “I could—”

  Nina stood up and pressed a hand on Jenn’s shoulder. “No, Jenny. This is my kitchen and here health takes precedence over taste. Besides, as you educate your palate, you’ll discover that the taste of all those fats and sugars and red meats becomes less appealing. Don’t they, dear?” She directed this last question to Cash, who just kept eating.

  Nina smiled at them as if her point had been made. “Now, then, how about a nice preserved-fish omelet? I preserved the fish myself. It’ll take fifteen minutes.”

  Steve was by no one’s account, including his own, a fussy eater but there were some things instinct alone convinced him to avoid. Like Bruno under the table, whom he’d been trying unsuccessfully to entice into licking the rest of the risotto off his fork.

  “That is so sweet of you, Nina,” Steve said. “But I’m afraid the mushrooms upset my stomach a little. So I’ll just sit here and keep you company, if I may?”

  “You’re sure?” Nina said doubtfully, reseating herself.

  “Absolutely.”

  Cash, who’d been eating his way through his risotto with a singleness of purpose that precluded paying attention to anything else, including Steve’s allergies, finished his last mouthful and set his fork down. He looked up and beamed. “Why’s every
one popping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes?” he asked.

  “No reason, Dad,” Jenn said.

  “Oh? Okay. Then let’s have another glass of wine.” He held up the bottle. “Jenny?”

  “Please.” She held out her glass and Steve followed suit.

  The shortcomings of the food were made up for by the Hallesbys’ wine cellar.

  “I should go online tonight and restock the wine cellar. The Buck Rub closed,” Cash told Jenn.

  “I’m not surprised,” she answered. “I’m just amazed he lasted as long as he did, the way he gouged on prices.”

  “And the Tinker Hut has closed, too. But just for the winter.”

  “The Christiansens bought a place in Naples, didn’t they?” Jenn asked. “Dub always said he was going to.”

  For someone “disconnected” from the town, Jenn certainly knew a lot about what was going on.

  “How long do you think you’ll be staying, Jenny?” Nina asked.

  “Eleven days.”

  “Ten hours, thirty-two minutes …” Cash muttered. He steeled a glance at his daughter. “Have you set your alarm yet?”

  “Dad, don’t be like that. I have lots of things to do with the new show and wrapping things up in Minneapolis. It’s crazy.”

  “Your father just likes your company,” Nina said. “‘Love knows not its depth ‘til the hour of separation.”’

  Steve looked at Nina, interested, waiting for someone to comment on her quote. No one did. “Kahlil Gibran,” she finally said.

  Jenn and Cash continued looking at each other without expression. There was something going on. All Steve’s instincts were quivering and he had good instincts. His own parents had died when he was a kid, and afterward he’d been sheltered, if not raised, by a maiden great-aunt. She’d been too old to do much “raising.” She’d love him, though, vaguely, inattentively, but with unstinting approval. Thus, not having had too much interaction with families, Steve was a little reticent to trust his instincts regarding them, but still …

  “I have to get back to the apartment,” Jenn finally said in careful tones. “I haven’t packed anything and I’m expecting the Realtor to have found me a new place by the end of the month.”