Jamie kept an eye out and sure enough a few moments later the redhead, looking a little puzzled, came into the dining room. She stopped Dar, who was on her way to a table with two plates of pie. Dar nodded in the direction of the kitchen. Jamie ducked out of sight and stirred the stew as if it took one hundred percent of her concentration. She didn’t think the redhead would be fooled. The water stopped upstairs.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Val Valentine? Am I in the right place?”
“She’s upstairs at the moment.”
“I didn’t know she ran a cafe.”
“Well, as you can see it’s undergoing some major changes.”
“That’s clear.” The redhead looked confused. “Should I look for her upstairs?”
“I’m sure she’ll be right back down. She…was going to taste the stew. I don’t think I have it the way she wanted. Would you like some coffee?”
“That would be great.”
Jamie poured a cup, betting that the redhead would find it weak. She looked as if she could do a direct IV of Liesel’s strong brew—she had that thin, slightly nervous look of a caffeine junkie.
Val was coming down the stairs. Jamie stepped back and said in what she hoped was a subservient tone, “There’s someone here to see you.” She blinked at Val’s pristine navy slacks and Edwardian linen shirt, and she reached instinctively into the cupboard where the clean aprons were stacked.
Val’s eyes telegraphed a thank you as she tossed the neck loop over her head and tied the waist cord in Jamie’s habitual back-front-back method, finished with a bowtie. Val took a deep breath, then seemed to catch the newcomer out of the corner of her eye.
“Sheila! What a wonderful surprise! What, you couldn’t wait for shrimp scampi?”
Jamie whistled to herself, then went back to stirring the stew. So…this was Sheila Thintowski. The woman with Val’s future in the palm of her hand. Eccentric dresser. Well, Jamie, she reminded herself, you promised Val you’d give it your all.
The two were exchanging hugs and then Sheila burst into a flurry of questions about the inn, the renovations and first and foremost, why Val hadn’t told Sheila that there was so much work underway.
For just a moment, Val looked at a loss for words, then she said with grace of a true hostess, “Let’s get comfortable and take our coffee into the other room.”
Sheila began to protest.
Jamie interrupted Sheila with a quiet, “Val? Before you go I need you to okay the stew.”
“Oh, yes,” Val said. She turned away from Sheila and mouthed, “Help me!”
Jamie picked up one of the French loaves. “I’ve been practicing hollowing these out like you told me.” She deftly extracted the core of the bread to make a suitable bread bowl for the stew. “Is that right?”
“Yes, you’ve got it.” Val then took the spoon Jamie proffered and tasted the stew. “It’s got a really good flavor, but you know, I think it needs salt, of all things. Good old ordinary salt.”
Jamie was not about to add salt without tasting it herself, but she nodded and said, “Right away.”
“Let’s move out to the dining room,” Val said to Sheila. Her color was back and from the bounce in her step, Jamie had a feeling that Val had found just the right explanation for Sheila.
Jamie tasted the stew. Damn. It did need salt.
Chapter 9
A lie plus a lie does not equal truth. Val decided to tell Sheila the truth—just not the whole truth.
“After you called and said that Mark Warnell wanted to be my Christmas guest, I thought, well, I really wanted to impress him. I just knew I had to finish the rest of the projects here by then, so that’s what I’ve been doing.”
Sheila was still frowning. “But why is this actually open for business? Since when do you run a restaurant?”
“It was only very recently that I became involved with the Waterview. The restaurant was already here.”
“But I thought you said you lived here. That you only had an apartment in San Francisco. I mean—I’m confused. Just where have you done all the projects you write about?”
Val had hoped Sheila wouldn’t ask point blank. But she had. Oy vey. “Can I be candid? I wasn’t sure how you would react, so I didn’t volunteer it before. But I see that was a mistake.” Val tried her most innocent look. “If we’re to be partners, then I should be completely forthcoming.”
Sheila was still frowning. “Go on.”
“The projects I wrote about were for other people. I didn’t have the capital to do them all for myself. But I was longing to really do something for myself. So I settled here. And with the help of friends and a—” Val stopped to clear her throat—“good assistant chef, I was able to make a lot of headway on an antiquated building.” Okay, so she was still clinging to the lie that she could cook. Well, she sort of could now. With Jamie’s help. She could make Cheerios.
“So this is all your work?”
Val felt a swell of pride, and she answered with complete honesty. “My conception and, except for the heavy work, all my own.”
“Very nice. But are you going to be finished in time?” Sheila’s frown had finally dissolved. She looked more like the woman Val had met in San Francisco whose eyes held an endless come-hither.
“Yes,” Val said. “Oh yes. The renovation will be done by then. This used to be an inn, guest rooms upstairs and everything. We’re enlarging the master suite, redecorating the other family bedrooms on the same floor, then eliminating two guest rooms to add two full baths and one water closet. Can you believe they expected eight people to share two bathrooms?”
Sheila looked incredulous. “And they made money? Were they nuts?”
A shadow fell over Val’s shoulder and Val hoped it wasn’t Jamie.
It was. Val hoped Jamie didn’t take Sheila’s remark personally.
“I’ve only just finished writing up your notes from our menu discussion. Am I right in guessing that this lady is one of that party?”
Criminees, Jamie sounded so meek, so…inexperienced. Val felt a real pang of guilt as she took the paper Jamie was handing to her with a meaningful glance.
“Yes, she is. Sheila, this is Jamie Onassis, the best chef assistant in the world.”
“Any relation?” Val noticed Sheila didn’t offer to shake hands.
Jamie blinked. “No. At least, I don’t think so. No oil, no money here.”
Sheila smiled dismissively and Val decided right about then that she didn’t like Sheila much. Nevertheless, she found some enthusiasm. “This is what I was thinking for our Christmas Day meal.” She scanned the page quickly. “Yes, I think it’s all here. A Jane Austen menu. Of course, the whole time you’re here the dining room will be closed, so we’ll have it to ourselves. Candlelight, the sound system will be working again by then, so conceptually you should be thinking Handel or Bach for music. We’ll start with Winter Pea Soup and Vegetable Pie.” She had no doubt that the vegetable pie would be complete with Jamie’s melt-in-your-mouth crust.
Jamie cut in smoothly with, “Val was telling me that in Austen’s time a formal meal was served what we call family-style, that is, food on the table and passed around as necessary. It wasn’t until later that formal dining meant food cut on a sideboard and delivered finished, like in a restaurant. She thought the Austen era was more intimate.”
“My—Mark Warnell loves Jane Austen. He’s going to be thrilled.”
“Don’t tell him in advance,” Val said. “I don’t want to ruin the surprise—or raise his expectations so high I can’t meet them.”
“Okay,” Sheila said. “I’ll keep the secret.” She seemed thoroughly convinced of the need for secrecy and Val felt much, much better about carrying it all off.
That was, until she looked at the menu again. “Jamie, I can’t quite read your writing.” She pointed.
“I’m sorry that’s so sloppy.” Jamie was getting better at subterfuge. “That’s the Celery Ragout with Wine.”
Ra-goo? Val had almost said rag-out. She pointed at the next item. “And this?”
“Pheasant à la braise with Forcemeat Balls.”
“Oh yes, the pheasant. I think you’ll like this roasting method.” She said roasting with some confidence, since Jamie had written it next to the name and underlined it. “And an egg dish, they were big on eggs in those days.”
“Val has been so nice to me,” Jamie said. “She said I can help out with the meal, and I’ll learn how to make a Syllabub.”
Jamie was really throwing herself into this, Val thought. She’d anticipated Val’s problem with whatever a Syllabub was. She was breathlessly describing some sugar concoction flavored with wine. Sounded awful, actually.
She was about to offer her own observation when she saw Dar headed their way. Cheezit. Dar could give away the whole shebang.
Jamie was already heading her off. The two conversed briefly, then Jamie, from behind Sheila, pointed at herself and made an urgent gesture toward the kitchen.
Val sighed contentedly to Sheila. “Jamie is a godsend. She can handle tonight’s menu just fine on our own, in fact it’s her own recipe for cornbread stuffing in game hens—”
“So we could have a chance to get to know each other,” Sheila said.
Oops. “I wish I could offer you a place to stay, but all the rooms are torn up,” Val said. She had a perfectly good idea where Sheila had expected to stay, but she was too afraid of slipping up to even consider making an offer of her bed. Besides, Sheila’s high wattage sex appeal was increasingly unappealing. “It’s very primitive at the moment.”
Sheila was plainly disappointed. “Maybe I could offer you something more civilized for the evening, then.”
“It would be…difficult. I don’t usually call it a day until after eleven, and I’m up by five thirty in the morning.”
“And your assistant couldn’t cover you so you could have a…late morning?”
“I wish she could,” Val lied. It wasn’t hard—she was getting a tad tired of Sheila’s assumption that Val could be bedded so easily. Did she give off that kind of vibe?
She was so intent on ducking Sheila that Liesel’s hand on her shoulder made her jump.
“Jamie finally let you have a seat?”
“Finally.” This is it, Val thought. She felt as if she were in a drawing-room murder scene, and all the fingers were going to start pointing at her.
“Cooking lessons can be very draining,” was all Liesel said. “Well, I didn’t mean to interrupt, just wanted to say hello.”
Val felt faint with relief. She was not cut out for a life of deception.
“Just how many gay women are there in this town?”
Val grinned. “Enough. It’s a very artsy live-and-let-live kind of town.”
“I could spend some time here,” Sheila said coyly. “So your assistant is demanding. Is that all she is?”
“What?” Val stared at Sheila, confused. Then she caught the innuendo. “Oh, no. No—Jamie and me, no, that’s not in the cards.” She laughed.
Jamie appeared out of nowhere. How did she do that? Val choked on the laugh and tried to fathom Jamie’s expression. Had she heard? Well, if she had she showed no signs of emotion, and she was pretty easy to read, all in all. Right now she just looked blank.
“This is Val’s new blend of coffee. I thought you might like to try it.” Jamie set the cup down in front of Sheila and walked away, her back straight as a broomstick. It was always like that. Was Jamie mad? Val couldn’t tell, which bothered her.
“Maybe you can show me the town,” Sheila was saying. “I have to drive back to the airport tomorrow, so this will be my chance to plan some sightseeing for Mr. Warnell.”
“I’d be glad to,” Val said. She would do almost anything to get Sheila out of the place.
Val went to the kitchen to take off her apron. Jamie was chopping nuts like there was no tomorrow. “I’m going to show Sheila the sights and hopefully park her at Hillside House.” Hillside House was the hotel farthest away. Sheila might be intrigued by the fact that the Murder, She Wrote cast had often stayed there when doing filming in “Cabot Cove.”
Jamie said, “That sounds good,” over her shoulder, but she never stopped chopping the nuts.
“Making anything special?” Jamie had been turning out a delicious chocolate concoction every night for nearly two weeks now.
“Hazelnut Charlotte. I don’t feel like chocolate right now.”
“Sounds great.” Val headed out the door, glad that Jamie was not angry with her.
Jamie was off chocolate. Val’s laughing rebuttal of the notion that she and Jamie could have any relationship had taken care of her infatuation. It would be a cold day in Hell before she made chocolate anything over Valkyrie Valentine. Absurd name, anyway.
Jamie supposed that she would have developed an infatuation for any reasonably presentable lesbian in close quarters with her. After all, she had only been with one woman—not even a lesbian, in retrospect. And that had been a very, very long time ago. All the pheromones that Val generated in the local lesbian population were making temperatures run a bit high, that was all.
Sheila left the next day without asking any more difficult questions. During the following week Jamie left Val to paint the dining room after the final inspections, and to continue breaking down bedroom walls. A local plumber ran new copper pipes for the extra bathrooms and replaced some existing lead pipes that might leak in the next few years. How Val managed to get them to do so much work for so little was a miracle, but they all did. Perhaps she was promising them a thank you in her first book through Warnell Communications.
Her muddled feelings didn’t stop her from creating more menus for the Warnell visit. She decided on a cold meal for Christmas eve, followed by participation in the caroling that Mendocinians liked to do, followed by mulled cider and hot pumpkin loaves. Val was leery of letting Warnell mingle with townspeople, any one of whom might mention Jamie’s wonderful cooking. But Jamie had argued that isolation might make them curious. Besides, caroling was a delightful tradition here, as was the early morning Christmas service at the nondenominational church.
With Val helping in the kitchen one night Jamie arrived home a little earlier than usual and was glad of the time to just relax and talk to Liesel. KatzinJam greeted her coldly, as if Jamie had abandoned him.
She finally coaxed Katz onto her lap. “I know, buddy. I’ve been really busy. But soon you’ll be king of the hill, in a brand- new place.” KatzinJam sank his claws in through Jamie’s jeans, then released them. Just a little pain to let her know he was still mad, but not so much that the breach couldn’t be mended. She started scratching KatzinJam’s ears and worked her way to his ruff.
“Making you pay?” Liesel brought Jamie her nightly cup of hot chocolate and then sank into the sofa beside her.
“He’s upset. But I was glad to get away a little earlier tonight.”
“You’re wearing yourself to a wisp.” Liesel tsk’d maternally. “Do you think after Val leaves you’ll be able to take Mondays off until tourist season?”
A logical question, but one Jamie couldn’t answer. She was stuck on “after Val leaves.”
“Jamie?”
“Sorry, I keep forgetting that Val will leave.” She felt Liesel’s searching gaze on her.
“She will. No sense thinking otherwise.”
“No sense at all,” Jamie echoed.
They chatted about anything but the inn and Val, then Liesel wisely suggested Jamie get a little extra sleep. She tried, but after studying the ceiling for too long, her sleep was not particularly restful.
She felt tired and heavy-lidded the next day but managed to keep up with a bustling breakfast crowd. If this continued, she’d have to take the soufflés off the menu. They took too much time, unlike her Pie Duet—a wedge of quiche with ingredients that changed every day, and a slice of Breakfast Pie. It was a popular combination.
She was beating eggs for a new batc
h of cobblers and bread pudding when a woman in the dining room caught her eye. Her hair was white and silver, and Jamie had the distinct impression that its becoming contrast to the denim jeans and gray sweatshirt was an accident. She was thin, ascetic almost, but not anorexic, and wore no ornamentation or rings, no watch or designer labels. She was tanned, but not deeply, and the hands that curved around the coffee cup showed signs of a lifetime of labor.
There was something familiar about her. It was as if she’d passed through the Waterview years ago. Jamie tried to picture the woman younger, then shrugged the fancy off. She would probably half-recognize lots of people over time.
The woman paid for her coffee and left, but she turned back to peer through the glass for a moment. Jamie caught the sweeping gaze of hazel eyes that probably hadn’t lit up in laughter for years. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart stopped beating.
She didn’t remember setting the spatula down, or even hurrying through the dining room to the wooden sidewalk.
“Wait.”
The woman turned back. She didn’t seem surprised or dismayed.
“I’m Jamie.” What would she say to that, Jamie wondered. She had wondered about this moment for many years.
“I know.”
They stared at each other. Jamie tried to draw some understanding of this woman who had left her in the care of strangers over twenty-five years ago. The long-banked anger and anguish was ready to be tapped, but the woman’s—her mother’s—blank response was not what Jamie had expected. Defensiveness, contrition, maybe.
At last her mother spoke. “You’ll want to know why.”
“I know why.” Jamie said it without heat; it was the truth.
“Of course you do. You knew me better than I did m’self.”
A slight drawl. She didn’t sound like she did in Jamie’s memories. “Then I’ll ask how you could do it.”
“It wasn’t hard. I know you expect me to say that it was, but it wasn’t. And it being so easy—that’s the greatest regret of my life. That I had so little love to give that I used it all up so quickly.”
Making Up for Lost Time Page 11
