by Robbi McCoy
By the time she stood directly beside him, she still had no answer. All she could think of was strangling him, possibly not the best way to proceed. He looked up from his clipboard and seemed momentarily startled by her presence, then smiled congenially.
“Quite bold, isn’t it?” she asked in her lowered voice.
Bâtarde looked her up and down slowly, before saying, “Sorry. I can’t comment. Not yet, anyway.”
“Understood. You’ve got a tough decision.”
“Are you here with one of the finalists?”
“No. Just a foodie. My name’s Rick.”
Bâtarde nodded politely, then seemed to get lost in Wren’s face. Does he see something amiss, she worried. Maybe her mustache was askew. Under the bright lights, she wasn’t sure her disguise would hold up.
“You look familiar,” he said. “Have we met?”
Wren laughed, trying not to sound as nervous as she was. “That’s a very old line. How quaint.”
Bâtarde looked momentarily flustered, then he relaxed into a knowing smile and let his eyes wander down the length of Wren’s body. Ah, thought Wren, a new possibility has opened up. Rick might have some advantage here Wren did not.
“You’ll be sticking around for the results?” Bâtarde asked.
“Wouldn’t miss it. It’s a special kind of thrill seeing you in action.”
“Why don’t you come sit over by the judge’s booth, Rick?” he suggested in an unmistakably flirty voice. “You get the best view from there. And I’ll have a better view of you too.”
Wren summoned up one of her brother’s leering come-on looks, the kind frequently sent over an uplifted shoulder, then followed Bâtarde to a seat just to the right of the judge’s booth.
Klaus had now returned and stood at attention on the floor in front of his display. All three of the finalists were present, looking collectively like they were going to vomit. While the announcer spoke, working everyone into a frenzy of anticipation, Bâtarde made eyes at Wren, who did her best to return the favor. Inside, she too wanted to vomit.
Then, suddenly, she realized the winner had been announced. She turned her attention to the floor where Klaus Olafssen jumped up and down, wiping tears from his cheeks. A tiny, middle-aged woman, whom Wren assumed was his mother, Katrina Olafssen of aebleskiver fame, came running to the floor and threw herself into his torso, disappearing in his embrace. Another woman, a young, feminine blonde in a lime green dress also ran out on the floor to embrace him. The other two competitors crept away.
On his way to congratulate Klaus, Bâtarde paused at Wren’s chair, putting a firm hand on her shoulder. “Wait for me,” he commanded.
He seemed to have no doubt she would. Of course she would, but not for the reasons he imagined.
When he had finished his rounds of contestants, sponsors, organizers, donors and fans, he returned to Wren, putting an arm around her shoulder and walking her out of the room and down a wide hallway.
“Were you planning on going to the gala tonight?” he asked.
“Yes. I know someone in the company.”
“Do you have a date?”
“Flying solo tonight.”
Bâtarde stopped to push open the double doors to the outside, gazing meaningfully down at her. “You don’t have to. I’d be honored if you’d accompany me.”
“Thanks. I’d like that.”
They both smiled as they emerged into the light of a low-dipping sun entering a bank of peach-colored clouds to the west. The moon, a full moon, had just made its appearance in the east, faintly visible through a lacy pattern of leafy tree branches. The midsummer moon, Wren noted, remembering Cassandra’s prediction: Thy fate will be sealed by the midsummer moon.
They walked to a black sedan where a uniformed driver opened the rear door for them. Wren hesitated, imagining being in the backseat with this cad, but the stakes were high. It was worth it. She got into the car, deciding the best way to keep his mind off romance was to engage him in conversation.
“Do you have a favorite among your restaurants?” she asked as the car took off.
“Not really. Each has its own unique personality, but I suppose I favor Josephine a little. The firstborn, you know? Have you been there?”
“Yes. Very nice place.” Wren thought it might be advantageous to get him talking about Eno if she could manage it. “I had your Dobos Torte there. Killer!”
He smiled gratefully. “Did you really like it?”
“Oh, yeah! I’ll have it again next time.”
He peered at her, his voice taking on a tinge of bitterness. “You didn’t find it a little…dry?”
Wren felt anxious, as if he were looking right through her disguise at his enemy, but she decided it was just nerves getting to her.
“Dry? Not a bit! Why do you ask?”
He took a deep breath. “Oh, it’s just this critic, this ridiculously pompous critic who’s gotten completely out of control. He, or she, has forgotten the point of reviewing a restaurant.”
“What is the point?” Wren asked, seriously interested in his answer.
“To promote the local economy by getting people out to eat, to celebrate fine dining. Panning my food won’t serve that goal.”
“You think a food critic should say only positive things?”
“Yes!”
“If every restaurant gets a first-rate review, then how do I choose where to eat? How do I know what to order? And, even worse, if a critic says great things about a bad restaurant, how can I trust anything he says? What’s the value of his opinion, then?”
Bâtarde eyed her soberly.
Careful, Eno, she cautioned herself. Get off your soapbox.
“But, still,” she said, “he or she must be an idiot to have found anything bad to say about that torte. It was chocolate perfection.”
Bâtarde relaxed and smiled again. “Yes, a total idiot. He doesn’t know a damned thing about Dobos torte and should be exposed for the charlatan he is and run out of the business. The problem is, this critic writes under a pseudonym and nobody knows his true identity.”
“Interesting. So you can’t defend yourself.”
Bâtarde slapped the seat between them. “Exactly!” He lowered his voice in confidence. “But I’ve made this my mission for weeks now. I made a list of all the likely food writers. I’ve been plotting his movements, studying his style. I’ve been narrowing in, winnowing down the list bit by bit. I’ve followed him to Ashland. The list got considerably smaller once he came here. That was his mistake. A big fish in a small pond makes a big splash. I have a fair idea who it is now, but I need corroboration before I make my move.”
“What exactly is your move going to be?” Wren asked fearfully.
Bâtarde clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded it into the palm of his left. “I’ll destroy him…or her.”
Wren flinched.
“First I’ll expose him. Eno Threlkeld won’t be able to go to any restaurant ever again with the protection of anonymity. And then I’ll undermine his reputation. I’ll dig into his past and credentials and education and family history and old lovers and find anything I can to use against him. When I’m done, Eno Threlkeld will be a joke, unfit to critique a pretzel stand on the street, let alone a five-star restaurant.”
His focus was chilling, his plan broader than she had imagined. He was clearly obsessed with his revenge. She recalled the facts of his parentage, his mother’s insanity, his father’s bloody rampage driven by intense ambition and singularity of purpose, just like he was. Suddenly she thought he might be capable of murder after all. She shuddered involuntarily.
“Is it really that important?” she asked tentatively.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “It’s only justice. With a few words, tossed off casually, coldly, as if it’s nothing but a game of wits, a critic can destroy an honest, hard-earned reputation, a reputation that has taken a lifetime to cultivate, that has been nurtured like a tender seedling to grow, to thriv
e, to become strong enough to support itself. For a man like me, my reputation is my life, as central to who I am as another man’s children are to him.”
Wren wanted to defend herself, to insist that a critic performed a service that by definition had to include the good and the bad and that Eno Threlkeld was neither casual nor cold, but merely honest. She recalled many emails over the last several years from chefs and restaurant owners, objecting to her negative comments. Fortunately, they weren’t all driven by the sort of monomaniacal impulses Bâtarde possessed. But they had all been disappointed and hurt. How to be a critic without hurting someone’s feelings? Not possible. Still, he was blowing her one criticism completely out of proportion. Nobody else remembered it by now. Her words weren’t that powerful. In reality, they did nothing at all to harm his reputation. All of his restaurants were still in business, still profitable, and still selling John Bâtarde’s signature Hungarian Dobos Torte every day. If he were a reasonable man, he would see that and give up his quest to destroy her. But obviously he wasn’t a reasonable man. He was a most unreasonable man. He had kidnapped the woman she loved, she reminded herself, and was plotting her murder.
“It’s only a matter of minutes now,” Bâtarde said, “before I know the true identity of Eno Threlkeld.” He looked triumphant.
“How will you find out?”
“I’ve found someone who can absolutely identify him, or her. Unfortunately, she’s not cooperating. But not to worry. I’ve found a way to persuade her.” He smiled distractedly.
“How?” Wren asked, trying not to let her dread show on her face. O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
Bâtarde looked at his watch. “I’m expecting a phone call at seven o’clock. I have to make sure I don’t miss this.” He took his phone from his briefcase.
When he got that call, she knew, it would be Raven giving her name, and her cover would be blown. There was nothing she could do. She still didn’t know where he was holding Sophie. But she was beginning to worry that he couldn’t be trusted to release her.
“You’re going to give Threlkeld a scare, is that it?” she asked. “Make some idle threat to flush him out?”
Bâtarde looked up abruptly to face her. “Idle threat? I never make idle threats. If that call doesn’t come in at precisely seven o’clock, Threlkeld will have blood on his hands tonight.”
Wren let herself fall against the seat, now fervently hoping Raven would come through with the call.
“Why don’t you move over here next to me,” Bâtarde said softly, baring his teeth in a leering smile.
She bolted to attention, realizing this plan had its drawbacks. When it became clear to him that she wasn’t moving, he slid closer to her, then put a hand on her thigh. She stiffened, holding back the impulse to claw through the ceiling. She pushed his hand away, pressing herself as hard as she could against the door on her side of the car. His disturbing grin persisted as he put one arm around her waist and pulled her up against him. She pushed against his chest with both arms as his mouth formed an exaggerated pucker. She was about to resort to violence when the sound of several cars honking captured their attention.
Bâtarde released her. “What’s going on?” he asked the driver.
Wren noticed they weren’t moving even though the light in the intersection was green. They were behind two other cars that were also stopped.
“Looks like animals in the road,” the driver replied just as the cars began to move.
As they took their turn through the intersection, Wren saw a line of goats exiting the crosswalk and gaining the sidewalk. There were six of them, variously colored, all does, looking unambiguously like the Tallulah Rose herd.
“Isn’t that a sight?” Bâtarde remarked, hanging out the window to get a better look.
Wren was sure that was Rose in the lead, trotting along in the same direction they were headed, looking like she knew where she was going, like an animal on a mission. The car soon left the parade of goats far behind.
Bâtarde pulled his head back in and faced Wren. “Where were we?”
“Hey, look!” Wren pointed ahead, “We’re nearly there!”
Indeed, their car was pulling into the circle at the entrance to Lithia Park.
Bâtarde looked at his phone again. “And it’s now seven o’clock. We’ll wait here a moment.”
Wren held her breath, waiting for his phone to ring. As the seconds ticked by, she silently cursed her brother, knowing how easily he could be distracted. When the phone rang, it caused them both to start.
“Yes,” Bâtarde answered, listening for a second. “You’re sure?”
Wren sat on her side of the seat, her muscles so tense her legs began to hurt.
“I’ll have to check this out before our deal is complete.” He clicked off the call, then sat staring at the phone, looking perplexed.
“What?” Wren prompted. “What’s the name?”
Bâtarde regarded her calmly. “I had a feeling all along it was a woman.”
Wren gritted her teeth, waiting for him to say her name.
“But this one isn’t on my short list.” He put the phone away. “She wasn’t even on my long list. In fact, I’ve never heard of her.”
“Really?” Wren asked. “Who is it?”
He looked at her with his lips pressed together in contemplation, then said, “Annie Laurie.”
“What!” Wren fell back against the car door. “Annie Laurie?”
Bâtarde nodded. “Do you know her?”
Wren stuttered, wondering why Raven would give a name from a Scottish folk song. “Uh, no, never heard of her,” she lied.
With a renewed sense of purpose, Bâtarde exited the car, saying, “Wait for me here. I’ve got to go meet the truck bringing in Olafssen’s display. Offloading is a tricky process. Once we get it on the cart, it’ll be good to go.”
Wren was stunned. She stepped out of the car and leaned against it as Bâtarde strode toward a delivery truck parked nearby. Why was Raven risking Sophie’s life? What was the point of this trick?
“I’ll kill him!” she muttered to herself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
...she is mine own;
And I as rich in having such a jewel
As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl,
The water nectar, and the rocks pure gold.
—The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act II, Scene 4
Sophie, Raven and Kyle arrived at Lithia Park amid a crowd of revelers and the distinctive chords of Elizabethan folk music. The costumes and makeup had taken longer to get into than they had anticipated, so the boys had been delayed, but Sophie had been able to make the phone call at seven o’clock as planned. She hoped it hadn’t been a mistake to give Bâtarde a fake name. She had been trying to stall, to give Wren more time to find Poppy. After everything that had transpired between them, Sophie wasn’t prepared to be the instrument that destroyed Wren’s career, not even for the sake of their baby goat. But Sophie believed Poppy would be spared, either by Bâtarde himself or through the intervention of Wren. At least she fervently hoped so.
“This is so festive,” Raven gushed, as they walked along a wooded path lit by variously colored hanging lanterns.
If Sophie had been less worried about Wren and Poppy, she would have been delighted with the evening. Both of her companions were charmingly arrayed, Raven as Titania and Kyle as Oberon in costumes of filmy green with petite wings on their backs, green tights, and crowns of gold. Kyle’s costume left his chest bare and was accessorized with a sparkly green codpiece while Raven’s was a more feminine variety with falsies.
They passed people in costume and others in street clothes. Most of the costumes were characters from A Midsummer Night’s Dream: fairies, Athenians and tradesmen, or “mechanicals” as they’re called in the play. There were also characters from the play within a play, Pyramus and Thisbe: a lion, a wall and a moon. One striking fellow wore a gold Athenian-style warrior helmet, a calf-lengt
h white robe trimmed in gold with a gold sash, leather sandals, and gold arm cuffs with a snake motif. The upper portion of his face was covered with the helmet visor. He stood tall and straight with a regal posture, his head inclined slightly upward. When he saw Raven and Oberon, he burst into an appreciative chorus of baritone laughter.
Shimmering cloth streamers and flower garlands had been woven through the shrubbery along the pathways. The park looked more than ever like an enchanted forest. They pushed on toward the music and the heart of this celebration, Sophie in the lead and Kyle and Raven skipping behind, holding hands.
The path finally opened up on an expansive grassy clearing where tiny flickering lights were strung through the surrounding trees, simulating fireflies or diminutive fairies. Nearby was a trio of musicians with medieval instruments, dressed in sixteenth-century costumes, playing a bright, merry tune. In the center of the clearing was a huge wooden contraption, brilliant red. As they neared it, Sophie saw it was the cupcake display, a gigantic flower, its plywood petals extending several feet in all directions. Arranged in neat rows atop the petals were hundreds of pastel-colored cupcakes. Suspended above those were small, swaying fairies, looking as if they were flying over the cakes. The indisputable focal point of the display was the enormous yellow stamen protruding from the center of the flower.
“Oh!” cried Raven, slapping his gloved hand to his chest. “Look at that!”
Through the crowd, Sophie recognized Klaus beside the display, towering over the others, and beside him was Dena, beaming, looking lovely and happy.
“Klaus won the bake-off!” Sophie cried, pointing.
They headed toward Klaus, who had changed out of his suit into a cream-colored sweater and brown pants. Sophie grabbed his arm to get his attention.
“Hi, Sophie!” He beamed. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“Neither did I. You won!”
