Hot Dish

by Brockway, Connie

  “But if it was?” she insisted.

  “Who knows? Six? Seven hundred thousand? It’s a moot point, though. Unless I either use that key or Fabulousa signs for a new key and opens that crypt herself, that sculpture is as good as gone. And if I don’t get it, I can guarantee Fabulousa’s not.”

  “Aren’t you a little much with your ex?” Jenn asked.

  “She got everything in our divorce and dragged it out over years. I’m bitter, yes,” he said. He didn’t sound bitter. He sounded pleased. “Revenge is sweet, Jenn. And sometimes it’s necessary. Sometimes you just have to put paid to a bill in order to move on. Come on, if you got the chance for a little redress against someone who’d made your life crappy for a long time, who’d made you doubt everything you thought you knew about yourself—your identity, your worth, everything—wouldn’t you do the same?”

  Of course she would: Ken Holmberg. Her thoughts flew back a couple decades to the state fair and how he’d given her hell for “cheating” and almost causing a “scandal” and then fast-forwarded to a few days ago to when he’d reminded her that her hometown status here was fraudulent and the cornerstone of her career was built on a deception. Hell, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been the one who’d told Dunkovich about that stupid picture. Narrow-minded, complacent, self-satisfied, he represented everything about this town that she despised.

  “Yeah,” she allowed softly. She looked up to find him regarding her curiously. He’d trusted her. He deserved that key. Well, he sort of deserved it. More than Dunkovich at least. “Steve, I have to—”

  Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Someone was pounding on the fish house door.

  “Hey, Jenn. Open up! It’s me, your agent, Natalie! I’m freezing my ass off out here.”

  Jenn traded startled glances with Steve as she pulled the door open to a figure straight out of Dante’s Eighth Circle of Hell, the one reserved for frozen fashionistas. Nat looked even more Gorey-like than usual, completely blanketed in head-to-toe black designer quilting, a silver fox cap crammed down over her pale face. Even through the layers, Jenn could see her shiver.

  “Nat! What are you doing here?” she exclaimed, swinging the door open wider and revealing a big, heavy-shouldered, middle-aged man in a heavy cashmere coat, impeccably groomed except that his weave was standing up like a cockscomb in the wind. He had the implacable mien of a Teutonic.

  “This is Verie Meuwissen,” Nat said, her teeth clattering. “He represents Mr. Jaax—”

  “Verie! You came!” Though Steve had pulled a shirt on, it was still undone, the edges flapping back in the breeze exposing a nicely corrugated stomach and a well-planed chest to the whole world. Which, thank God for the gale, consisted only of Nat and Verie. Steve swooped out from the interior of the fishing house and picked up the bear-sized man and hugged him.

  Nat’s widened eyes rolled from Steve’s bare chest to Jenn.

  “Thank you!” Steve was saying to his friend. “Did you bring the money?”

  “What are you doing here?” Jenn repeated to Nat.

  “Can we come in?” Nat said, looking longingly at the fish house.

  “I’m afraid it will be a little too close,” Jenn said, shooting a glance at Verie.

  “Then come with me,” Nat said. “I have a room at someplace called the Valu-Inn and we have to talk.”

  “As do we, dear boy,” Verie intoned to the still fondly smiling Steve.

  Nat was right. Jenn and she did have to talk. And unless Nat had fifty thousand dollars, she wasn’t going to like what Jenn had to say.

  Chapter Forty-four

  1:50 p.m.

  The Valu-Inn, Fawn Creek

  “Okay, you did your fish thing, we’ve had lunch, you made nice with the locals, but now we’re here and now I want to know: who are you and what have you done with Jenn Lind?” Nat demanded, tossing her coat on the double bed that took up most of her room at the Valu-Inn.

  Jenn swept her hair back with her hand, trying to figure out where to begin, how much to reveal.

  “What are you doing with your hair?” Nat asked in patent exasperation. “It’s all … down and … messy. You look like a Sharon Stone wannabe. No,” she amended, “you look like you just got lucky in a fishing shack with Steve Jaax! Steve Jaax! Are you nuts? If you wanted to have monkey sex with someone, why didn’t you pick someone no one knows so if he goes public no one will believe him?”

  “Steve’s not going to say anything,” Jenn mumbled, adding defensively, “And I prefer to think that he’s the one who got lucky.”

  Nat threw up her hands. “Have you been drinking antifreeze? Steve Jaax will tell anyone anything at anytime. He’s disastrously honest. Watch.” Before Jenn could react she’d stabbed a series of numbers into her cell and held it up to her ear. “Verie? Nat. Is Steve with you? Put him on.”

  “What are you doing, Nat?” Jenn asked uncomfortably.

  “Steve, this is Nat. Did you have sex in the fishing house with Jenn Lind?”

  She held the phone up, sliding the speaker phone volume to max.

  “Yes” Steve’s voice boomed with perfect composure. “We did. I’m pretty sure I’m in love with her.”

  Jenn couldn’t help it. She felt the corners of her mouth lifting.

  Pinning Jenn with a cold gaze, Nat snapped her phone shut. “Point taken? Aw, come on! Stop with the goopy smile…. Oh. My. God. You’re falling for him.”

  “No,” Jenn said. “No! He’s a romantic. I’m a pragmatist. He’s a serial monogamist. I’m a loner. We came together for a few nice moments and that’s it.”

  “How nice?”

  “Fantastic.” She shook herself. She was telling Nat the truth. At least what she knew to be the truth. What she felt wasn’t necessarily the truth. Objectively, their … tryst in the fish house had been a very nice, an obviously much-needed escapade, one she would always look back upon fondly. But it was time to start moving forward again. To deal with the obstacles in the road ahead, not to spend time mooning over the view in the … rearview …

  Her eyes widened. My God. She’d had a detour. Her jaw went a little slack with the wonder of it.

  “Jenn? Jenn!”

  She’d had a detour. She hadn’t planned on it, made allowances for it, or anticipated it. For the first time in years, she’d thrown away the road map, closed her eyes, and followed some internal device. And for a short time, she’d been a tourist enjoying the trip rather than a long-haul driver carrying a load. She’d taken a detour. Who knew what she might do next?

  “Jenn. Have you heard anything I’ve said?” Nat demanded angrily.

  “No,” Jenn shook her head. “Now how is it you’re here, Nat?”

  “I begged a ride on Verie’s charter plane, and let me tell you, that was not a fun ride. I think they closed the airport as soon as we left—”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Jenn broke in. “I mean why are you here?”

  “I’m here because Bob Reynolds called and informed me that my client and AMS might have a problem.”

  “Well, he’s got that right,” Jenn announced, feeling strangely empowered. “We do have a problem. A big problem. In fact, I was going to call you today.”

  Nat turned around and tried to sit on the table only, because she was so short, she had to hop up to do so. She crossed her spindly little arms over her narrow little chest. Her face was flat and expressionless. “Speak.”

  “Gladly,” Jenn said, striding up and down in front of Nat, her irritation mounting with each step. “Do you know what they’ve done? They’ve changed the entire format of the show, the whole concept, without consulting me! And do you know what they are going to call this newly revamped show they expect me to host? Checklist for Living!”

  Nat’s mouth twisted a little but she only said, “Continue.”

  Jenn stopped pacing to face her and stare. “‘Checklist for Living, Nat. They are going to make cheat sheets for life and I am going to present them on each show and go
through them, point by point. Do you know what our checklist for the first episode is?”

  Nat shook her head.

  “‘Checklist for a Winter Wonderland Weekend.’ Check point one was ‘Traveling Smartly and Safely.’ I had to put tire chains on a Mercedes GL class SUV.”

  Nat didn’t blink.

  “Number two, Nat, was ‘Be Fashionable and Fun in Designer Chic Lodge Wear.’ They made me wear flowered pink stretch slacks, Nat. On national television.” Her voice trembled. “Do you know what my ass looks like covered in pink flowers? Your grandmother’s sofa.”

  “Jenn, I’m sure—”

  Jenn held up her hand and Nat subsided into silence. “Not content to display my upholstered ass upright, they then made me do check point number three, ‘Whimsy and the Winter Wonderland.’

  “The ‘whimsy’ entailed me flailing around in the snow like a dying sea lion in order to make a snow angel. A process I was forced to repeat three times because each time I did, my flower-covered ass dug so deeply into the snow that the resultant angel looked like it had a butt tumor.”

  Nat’s eyes were round and her lips had tightened into a little, pleated circle.

  “If you laugh, Nat, I will have to feed you to the huskies.”

  Nat cleared her throat. “I’m not laughing.”

  She wasn’t, either. Her face had that grim, determined look she got when she was going to do battle with network heads and publishing moguls. She popped off the table, her little stick arms akimbo. Jenn stood aside, prepared to watch as she sicced her mini-mongoose on that snake Bob Reynolds.

  Rather than marching out the door, Nat stopped in front of Jenn and glared up into her face. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Jenn couldn’t have been more surprised if Nat had bitten her. “What do you mean?”

  “My God, Jenn, so you had to put some chains on a tire. Don’t tell me you actually did the work because I won’t believe it. And then they asked you to put on some clothes you felt made your ass look big. So what? If your ass looks that bad, they’ll block it out. Believe me, their sponsors don’t want you to look bad in their clothes.”

  “It’s not just that,” Jenn said, a little surprised she was having to explain this. “It’s this checklist thing. Checklist for Living? Come on, Nat. It’s obscene.”

  Nat ignored the comment. “What have you been doing up here, Jenn? Listening to your own press? Well, let me give you a little reality checklist. One, you’re not a national star yet. Two, if you want to be a star you’ll play the game. Three, no one has asked you to do anything anyone could possibly kvetch about. Yet you’ve managed.”

  Jenn backed away, confused, her earlier feeling of empowerment seeping away as worry took its place. She’d counted on Nat to be in her corner, to fight the good fight for her. But Nat didn’t think this was the good fight. And Nat wasn’t in her corner. She was in Bob’s and Dwight Davies’s and AMS’s. In ten years of working together, Nat had never sold Jenn out. She couldn’t believe her agent was doing it now. Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe Nat was right.

  “Look, Jenn,” Nat said, her expression relaxing. “I’ve talked to Bob and I told him it wasn’t well done, him springing all these changes on you the way he did up here. And he agrees and he’s sorry. But the bottom line is, we’ve got work to do and he has footage to shoot tomorrow afternoon before they take off and he wants some sort of assurance that you’re on track with all this. I said you could give him that.”

  Jenn caught herself about to rake her hair back from her face. Instead, she moved away from Natalie, toward the window, her thoughts a tempest.

  “Jenn, you have worked harder than any person I know in order to get to where you are at this moment.” Nat’s voice followed her, vibrating with the need to convince Jenn. “I have to ask myself why someone who has worked that hard would be willing to throw it away because she didn’t like the new title of her show. And the only answer I can come up with is that you’re afraid. Afraid, ultimately, of making it big. You don’t dare believe it and you’re afraid it’s going to be taken away from you like … like Raleigh was. You’re so afraid that you think it would be better to throw it away before it can be ripped away.”

  Jenn’s brow furrowed with consternation. Fear of success? Was she a candidate for some Dr. Phil special? Was she being that goofy? Maybe she was. Nat was right. She had worked twenty years to get to where she was right now. It even made a bizarre sort of sense.

  “Jenn”—Nat’s voice was quiet, reassuring—”no one’s going to take this away. Only you can screw this up. The sky, my dear, dear friend, is literally the limit. But”—her voice hardened—“if you sign off on this now, no one will touch you. Oh, shit, yeah, maybe a second-rate station or a fourth-rate cable company, but this opportunity will have passed you by. Is that what you want?”

  No. Of course not. “No.” Jenn looked over her shoulder. Her agent stood where she’d left her, her hands folded in front of her. “I don’t know what I want.”

  “I do. You want success. You have always been driven by the ‘Need to Succeed.”’ Nat cracked an ironic smile. “Now I don’t know what bucolic haze you’ve been wandering around in up here over the last few days, and I admit Steve Jaax is cute. But this town and Steve Jaax—they’re not the real world. They’re not your real world.”

  Nat was right. It had all gotten screwed up, all twisted. Jenn’s navigation system had momentarily faltered.

  “Don’t you want to know that your future is secure, rock-solid, guaranteed? You stick to the AMS script, and I promise you, it is.”

  Yes. That was what she’d always wanted. “Yes.”

  “Then for God’s sake, Jenn, shake the snow off your boots. Focus on the future. Be that guided missile I know and love.”

  Jenn wasn’t a fool, no matter how foolish she’d been acting. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t be. “Okay.”

  “That’s more like it.” Nat’s small body relaxed.

  “But, Nat?” Jenn said, slowly turning. “There’s another problem.”

  “I knew it! I knew there was something more behind this bizarre Jenn Lind thing.” Nat slammed the heel of her hand into her forehead. “What now?”

  “There’s a certain little tiny piece of my past that Dwight Davies might take exception to.”

  “Crap. I knew you were too good to be true! Okay. We’ll deal. Abortion, drug abuse, child out of wedlock?” Nat ticked off a list, watching Jenn closely.

  “No, no, no.”

  “Felony conviction, jail time, gambling habits?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t smoke, don’t have any DWI. I know you’re not gay, so what is it?”

  Hearing it like that, the list of infractions that in Dwight Davies’s mind were grounds for expulsion, twisted Jenn’s stomach into a knot. How could she work for someone so sanctimonious and self-important? He was just Ken Holmberg on a bigger scale. On the other hand, she’d known that when she signed the contracts. “Any of those things could get me written off the show?”

  “Some more than others, but on a day when Dwight was in a bad mood, yeah. Why? Which one is it, Jenn?”

  “I—”

  “No. Don’t tell me,” Nat broke in. “I don’t want to know. The less anyone knows, the better. The question is, can you fix it? Shut it down for good?”

  “It depends. Some people might … There could be talk.”

  “Talk?” Nat scoffed. “Talk we can probably control. Concrete proof is a different matter. Bills of sale, hospital records, photos? Not so easy to discount. Can you get rid of the proof?”

  “I could if I had the money.”

  “Someone here is blackmailing you? Shit, hon. No wonder you hate this town. Okay. Can you get the money? Friends? Family? Jaax?”

  Steve? No. Aside from wanting the sculpture for himself, he despised Dwight and thought that working for him made a person morally suspect. Still, he’d said he “probably” loved her. You had to admire that sort of hones
ty, didn’t you? He might give her the money if she asked. But it wouldn’t be enough. She needed the entire fifty thousand.

  There was only one place to get that sort of cash that fast. But to risk everything on the turn of card and some all but forgotten expertise she’d had as a kid? She took a deep breath, amazed she was even considering going back to the casino for a second time. It was contrary to everything she believed in. She wasn’t a risk taker, she wasn’t a gambler, and she wasn’t someone who played outside the rules. Was this how her father had felt when he’d arrived in Vegas? Okay. That had failed. But … had it?

  She shook her head; the answer to that question wasn’t the issue right now. What was at issue was her life.

  The winner of the All-Amateur Dusk-to-Dawn Tournament took home a cash prize of one hundred thousand dollars in addition to whatever winnings they took from the table. It was crazy and the odds were against her, but it had already worked once and maybe lightning would strike twice. Besides which, it was an amateur tournament, and what with the snowstorms keeping people from driving in from outside the area, most of those playing in the tournament would be local.

  “Jenn. Is there any chance you can fix this?” Nat asked.

  “A small one,” she answered. “But I’ll need to come up with a thousand dollars first. How much do you have?”

  Nat opened her purse. It was her future, too.

  Chapter Forty-five

  3:05 p.m.

  Hilda Soderberg’s home

  Fawn Creek, Minnesota

  Hilda Soderberg was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the various dishes she’d prepared for old Johanna Nygaard’s funeral tomorrow. She stood in the middle of the tiny, square kitchen and eyed the ranks of glass and ceramic casserole dishes like a field marshal surveying her troops. Two chocolate sheet cakes took over the linoleum-topped kitchen table, and Esther had promised to make two yellow—not that anyone would eat them, with her chocolate being offered, but Johanna had been a popular woman at the retirement home, so maybe—and that took care of dessert. On the counters, Hilda had a tuna hotdish, a tater tot hotdish, a scalloped salmon hotdish, and a casserole overflowing with meatballs. So that would be enough hotdishes then. Nets Youngstrom was bringing the ham and rolls, and the church kitchen was well supplied with coffee and Hawaiian Punch. Which only left the salads.