“You two make a habit of this?” Clarissa sounded anxious.
“Of course not,” Quill said. “But you get all kinds of people coming in and out of a place like ours, and over the years, there’ve been a few corpses and the two of us got drawn in accidentally. Mostly accidentally,” she amended, after turning over their prior cases in her mind.
She sipped her red wine. All through her pregnancy, and for the eight months while she was breast-feeding, she’d had to give up wine. It wasn’t a hardship at all, when you considered the miracle that was her little boy. But it was nice to be able to drink a glass or two with her sister.
“Corpses?” Clarissa said, even more anxiously.
“We didn’t commit any of the murders,” Meg assured her. “And we’ve never been convicted of a thing . . . well, Myles would tell you we should have been convicted of meddling, but that’s not a crime, it’s not even a misdemeanor. So please don’t worry. You’re perfectly fine.”
There was a short silence. And for some reason, it was an uncomfortable one. Quill, a little at sea, looked at her sister, who in turn was looking out at the gardens in a self-satisfied way, and then looked at Clarissa, who seemed miserable and determined, both at once.
“Look!” Clarissa said a little too loudly. “There’s something you need to know about me.”
“You’re not Clarissa Sparrow,” Meg said. “You’re Clare Robbins, and you’ve just gotten out of jail for tax fraud.”
Quill froze. Then she said, “Oh, dear. Oh my gosh.”
“That’s my sister,” Meg said affectionately. “Super speedy with the amazed expletive.” She patted Quill on the knee. “That’s one of the reasons she’s been so anxious about our detective activities. You’re on probation, right?”
“Right,” Clare said, faintly.
“And parolees get into a lot of trouble if they associate with known felons. But we aren’t. Known felons, that is. So you can rest easy.”
“Good grief,” Quill said.
Clare made a sound that might have been a laugh. Then she set her glass of wine down on the little table that sat between the wicker chairs. “Did LeVasque tell you?”
Meg shook her head. “Nope. It was the shortcake.”
“My shortcake?”
“For the blueberries in that dessert you made tonight. I stopped in at your restaurant when I was in New York last year.”
“Le Tartine,” Quill said suddenly. “I remember. You raved about it, Meg.”
“You made the best pastry I’ve ever had. And that shortcake tonight . . . well, if your shortcake’s anything to go by, you’re the best baker I’ve ever met, too. So . . .”
Quill knew what was coming next. She’d never actually been tied to a set of railroad tracks with a train coming; at the moment, she felt a lot of sympathy for people who had. But she loved her sister, and if this was a way to get people back into Meg’s dining room, she’d support it. Although she’d probably have to keep a closer eye on the accounts and the cash drawer. “You’re thinking that she’d be a terrific draw for the kitchen, Meg. And you’re right.”
“You mean you’re offering me a job?”
“Why not? We could use a great pastry chef.”
Clare set her wineglass down next to Quill’s and started to cry.
“I’d like to try it out for a month or so,” Meg said. “What do you think?”
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Clare said. “Hang on a minute, will you?” She put her hands over her eyes, went very still, and counted backward from ten. She sighed heavily, sat up straight, and wiped her eyes with the bottom of her T-shirt. “Okay. It’s under control. I’ve just been on edge for so long, and you’ve been so great about this, Meg, that I kind of lost it.”
Quill began to get out of her chair. “I’ll get a tissue.”
“No, no. Sit back. I’m okay now. Thanks. And I want to tell you what happened. I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time in your kitchen, Meg, but it was long enough to see that you guys are really tight together. You know what I mean? You all seem to take care of each other. Look at the way you handled the thing with Dina, Quill. And your waitstaff loves you. And those kids in the kitchen think you walk on water. Anyway.” She took another deep breath. “I couldn’t take a job with you all if you weren’t able to trust and like me in the same way. So.
“This is what happened.
“I met Paul in Paris. We were both students at the CB.”
“Cordon Bleu,” Meg said.
Quill scowled. “I know that.”
“Yes. Well. Paul had just gotten his CPA.”
“That’s certified public accountant, Meg.”
“I know that, Quill.”
“Wasn’t sure. Sorry, Clare. I’m still a little ticked about Meg’s trip to jail.” The two of them also had decided, without a word, that the atmosphere needed lightening. Clare’s tears were still very near the surface.
“Paul wasn’t thrilled at the idea of spending his life totaling up numbers for other people. So we decided to come back home to New York and open a restaurant. He’d handle the entrees. I’d specialize in the pastries.”
“Your pastries are brilliant,” Meg said. “You should have seen the reviews in Gourmet and L’Aperitif, Quill.”
“Thanks. I worked hard at them. Well. Paul took over raising the money. He’s a Harvard business school grad, so he hit up a bunch of his loaded buddies for the cash for the start-up. It was a lot,” she said soberly. “A couple of million. I found the space. We took over a restaurant that had gone belly-up. I found this wonderful architect who remodeled the whole place, and we opened La Tartine two springs ago.
“I don’t know when we began to run into trouble. Business was great. We were lucky with our reviews and at one point, we were booked four months in advance. Then . . .” Clarissa stopped and struggled for composure. “Then we hired a maitresse d’. A friend of Paul’s from his accounting days, and they took off. For the Seychelles, it turned out. No extradition.
“I started handling the finances myself, of course. And I found nothing had been paid. Not the architect, not the builder, no one. Just the food suppliers and the wine guys.”
All three of them knew how alert food suppliers were to defaulting restaurants. It was pay on delivery or no delivery.
“Then the investors started calling. And I couldn’t find the money.”
“In the Seychelles, was it?” Meg asked. “The rat.”
“It was worse than that. I’m still not exactly sure how he did it—I just blanked out when the lawyer tried to explain it to me, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think he quite got it himself.”
“Public defender?” Quill said.
“Just some very nice guy from Albany Law School. He tried his best. Anyhow, it looked as if I’d helped steal it. Paul had gotten my signature on a bunch of transfers. I never looked at . . .” Clare stopped again. “Anyhow. It was in all the papers. You know what happened. I was sentenced to jail for fraud for two years. I got out early on parole. Mainly because Bernard LeVasque vouched for me and guaranteed me a job. But it was a job with a contract. I can’t quit. I mean, I can, but there’s this huge financial penalty if I do. And if I’m fired . . . there’s a good chance my parole will be revoked.”
She folded her hands in her lap. “So that’s it. You still want to hire me?”
“Not to do the accounts of course,” Meg said. “But we’re awfully glad to have you.” She patted Clare’s back. “You’re going to love it here.”
7
~Salade Nicoise~
For four personnes
4 ripe Roma tomatoes
1 thinly sliced peeled cucumber
1 head red-leaf lettuce
½ cup young lima beans
4 marinated artichoke hearts with stems
1 bulb of fennel, peeled and sliced thin
1 small Vidalia onion, chopped
2 hard-boiled eggs, attractively sliced
8-o
unce can of tuna filet in water
16 Kalamata olives
4 seasoned toasted croutons*
½ cup olive oil
¼ cup red wine vinegar
Handful chopped basil
1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed
Divide first ten ingredients in four portions and arrange in a beautiful style on a large plate. Mix last four ingredients with a wire whisk, and divide among the plate. Add toasted croutons.
*Recipe may be downloaded from my website.
—From Brilliance in the Kitchen, B. LeVasque
Jack banged his spoon into the middle of his bowl of granola, hopped off his booster chair, and took a running leap onto the foot of Quill’s bed. Max barked and jumped up to join him. Quill slid her charcoal pencil into the nightstand drawer and turned her sketch pad face out.
“Who’s this?” she asked in the voice she used just for Jack.
“Me,” Jack said. Then, with simple immodesty, “I’m gorgeous.”
“And who told you that?”
“Gram!” Jack shouted. Then one fist full of Max’s ear, he demanded, “Where is she?”
“Out for a walk.”
“Without me?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because mornings are our time, Jack.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you,” Quill said.
“Why?”
When she was pregnant with Jack, Quill had abandoned her business management classes at nearby Cornell University (to the silent but heartfelt relief of her employees) for classes in Child Development, Know Your Toddler, and Excellent Parenting. The teacher in Know Your Toddler had been very clear about the pitfalls during Terrible Twos. The “why?” Quill gathered, was like the zucchini plants in the vegetable garden: endlessly productive of yet more “whys.”
A familiar rat-a-tat sounded at her door. “Do you hear that knock at the door?”
Jack cocked his head. “Yes.”
“Whose knock is that?”
“Auntie Meg!”
“Would you tell her to come in, please?”
“All by myself?”
“Yes.”
“Then, no. I will not.” His smile was seraphic.
“Okay. I will.” Quill threw the duvet aside and started to get out of bed.
Jack shook his head. “No. No. No. This is my job.”
The door opened, and Meg poked her head inside the room. “You guys up already?”
“She did it herself, Mommy,” Jack said. “Ha-ha!”
Meg bent, scooped him up, and gave him a kiss. “Hey, pumpkin face.”
“Hey, cereal face,” Jack said. “Hey, dog face. Hey, Meg face.”
“Jeez.” Meg dumped him next to Max, then perched on the bed herself. “The kid’s turning into a terror.” She tickled his tummy. “A terror.”
What with the dog, her sister, her son, and herself, Quill figured it was a good thing she had a queen-sized bed. She drew her knees up to her chin to give everyone more room and said, “Have you been down to the kitchen yet?”
“Tuesday’s my day off.”
Quill waited expectantly.
“Of course I’ve been down to the kitchen. She’s doing fine. She was up at four to set the bread rising, which was very cool. And she didn’t say a thing about getting a brick oven, although we’ve got to think about that, Quill, if we’re going to get serious about breads.”
“Okay.” They were having a good year, for once, despite the low attendance in the restaurant. Of course, it helped a great deal that Myles’s earnings meant she didn’t have to worry about her own draw. “I’ll run it by John when we do the quarterly accounts. If she’s still here.”
“I hope this works out. She sure has an awful story. That ex-husband sounds like a total jerk. Lied to her, stole money, forged her signature, cheated the government, set her up for the fall, and then ran off to the Seychelles with the hostess. Yuck!”
“Yuck doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“What this country needs,” Meg said, “is tort reform.”
“Hah?” Quill said.
“Here’s this poor woman, no money, no friends, just a lot of pissed-off creditors, and what does she get? Some overworked schmuck from the public defender’s office who doesn’t know a general ledger from General Motors. If she’d had better representation, she wouldn’t have served those eighteen months in the slam.”
“Meg, I don’t think tort reform has anything to do with criminal acts.”
“No?” Meg said in a superior way.
“No.”
“I suppose I could find out,” Meg said reflectively. “Justin would know.”
“I can see that you’re dying to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I see that the very capable Justin Whosis is about to get a phone call from my sister.”
“Martinez. Justin Martinez. And he’s more than just capable. He’s gorgeous.”
“Wow,” Quill said, startled at the vehemence in her sister’s voice. “He must be. Are you going to bring him by for dinner?”
“Maybe. We’ll see.”
“And Jerry?”
Meg picked up Jack’s hands and started a game of patty-cake.
“Okay. We have a ‘no comment, Your Honor’ in regard to Jerry Grimsby. While we’re on legal subjects, so to speak, what’s the status of this alleged assault you committed? You’ve what? Been released on your own recognizance? Is that the right expression?”
Jack snatched his hands away and began to hum tunelessly to himself. Meg leaned back against Quill’s knees. “That’s the right expression. Next step is a hearing, and Justin says once Howie gets to meet LeVasque up close and personal, the court will give me a medal instead of a sentence. LeVasque was,” Meg said with sudden intensity, “absolutely foul. Dina saw it all, and she’s incapable of saying anything but the absolute truth, so I’m not worried one little bit. Besides,” she added, in a more practical tone, “Justin thinks we should meet with LeVasque and his lawyers and work something out so that the civil complaint is dropped. Justin says if the civil complaint is dropped, the criminal charges should go away, too. Justin says so, anyway.”
Quill wondered if she was going to get very tired of the phrase “Justin says.”
“Mommy!” Jack said. “There’s a rat-a-tat-tat at the door!”
“And whose knock would that be?” Quill said.
“Gram!”
“Would you tell her to come in, please?”
Jack tilted his head to one side while he considered his options. The first was appealing: No. No. No. But then Mommy would tell Gram to come in, and Jack would have missed his chance, or worse yet, Gram would come in all by herself, so he shouted, “Come in, Gram!” and Doreen walked in the door.
“Hey, Doreen,” Meg said.
“Morning, Meg. Morning, Quill. Morning, young Jack-a-rooty. You got your walkin’ shoes on?”
“No,” Jack said, who in fact did have his shoes on. “I put them on Max.”
Doreen hefted Jack onto one hip. “We got a playdate at the park,” she said. “See you later. And, Quill? That big old orange cat’s tramping around downstairs and that Miz Fredericks’s takin’ on something fierce. And Dina said don’t forget you got that talk.”
Quill stared at her. “Talk?”
“To them WARP people. About running a bed-and-breakfast?”
Quill flopped back against the pillows and pulled the duvet over her head. “Oh, shoot! I forgot!”
“I don’t know what you know about running a bed-and-breakfast, anyway,” Doreen said. “This is an inn. We’ve got twenty-seven rooms . . .”
“I know that, Doreen.”
“And a full restaurant. We even”—Doreen took a breath—“have a gol-durned beach. This bed-and-breakfast stuff is for amateurs.”
“True,” Quill said. “Dang.” She felt her forehead. “I may be coming down with something.”
&nb
sp; “Well, I sure as heck hope not,” Doreen scolded, “because if you got it, Jack’s gonna get it. And if you are sickening for something, it’d better wait until noon, because your talk is at ten with coffee and time for Q and A.”
“I was just sort of guessing about being sick,” Quill said meekly. “I feel fine, really. Tell Dina I’ll be there as soon as I get dressed. Ask Clare to put Bismarck in the garden shed or something, will you?”
“That the skinny brunette in the kitchen? Thought her name was Clarissa.”
“She’s Clare,” Meg said. “And she can put Bismarck in the pantry.”
“Got it.”
Quill shoved Max onto the floor and waved them all out. “Whatever. Bye-bye, Jack.”
“Come with us, Max! Bye-bye, Mommy! Bye-bye, Auntie Meg. Bye-bye, room! Bye-bye, rug. Bye, bye, bye!” Jack’s shouts trailed him down the hall and finally died away.
“How to run a bed-and-breakfast?” Meg said. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re much better qualified to give a talk on how to raise a toddler without going totally insane.”
Quill sighed. “They asked and I said yes, in a weak moment.” She looked at her watch. “But it’s not until ten, and it’s only nine, now. I’ll think of something. But first, I’ve got to get Clare onto the payroll. I’m listing her as a temp until we see how this works out. Which reminds me, is she Robbins or Sparrow?”
Meg shrugged. “Sparrow’s her maiden name. The divorce isn’t final yet, so legally she’s still Robbins but if I’d been married to that fathead, I’d go back to my maiden name so fast you couldn’t see me for spit.” Suddenly, she jumped off the bed. “The day’s a-wasting! I’m gone! Call me if you need me.”
The door shut behind her before Quill could ask her (a) if she was going to give Jerry the standard “it’s not you, it’s me” farewell speech or (b) if she was planning on hedging her bets and dating both guys at once. Then she figured it wasn’t her business anyway, but going downstairs to smooth Muriel Fredericks’s ruffled feathers was, so she got up and went into the kitchen to get dressed.
Toast Mortem Page 7
