Double Shot (37 page)

So Sandee had put all her energy into planning the murder of John Richard Korman. According to Lana, who was working on a plea deal, Sandee had encouraged her to hire John Richard to run the Smurfs, who laundered all that cash that came in to the Rainbow. Sandee had known that John Richard would take advantage, that he wouldn’t be able to resist skimming. As the cops say, “People don’t change. They just get better camouflage.”
You think you know people, and sometimes you do.
John Richard was unable to resist Sandee’s seductiveness. Courtney MacEwan couldn’t possibly compete with Sandee’s years as a stripper. Sandee was good. Most important, she hadn’t forgotten what had happened to her.
She’d had a month to put her plan into action. She’d gathered the materials that would point to other people, acting ditzy the whole time, so we wouldn’t suspect she was up to anything.
Does your mom protect herself? she’d asked Arch. Ooh, a revolver? Where does she keep it?
Where does that pretty Courtney MacEwan keep those pink tennis balls? she’d asked at the tennis shop, during one of her long waits at the golf shop. Ooh, may I see one of those cans?
At Albert Kerr’s memorial lunch, when Ted Vikarios had seen Arch in the kitchen, he’d known immediately that the Jerk was the father of his grandson. The resemblance between the two boys was just too strong. Even I had thought Gus was Arch. So Ted had confronted John Richard in the parking lot, probably just as Sandee was coming back with my thirty-eight tucked in her bag. Aha, she’d thought, one more person to blame this on! She hadn’t had anything of Ted’s to plant at the scene, but she knew what the argument was about: a child whom John Richard had supposedly fathered. So at the last minute, she’d said something like, “Just a minute, honey,” and run back to my van for one more thing: my kitchen shears to cut off a chunk of John Richard’s hair, and make it look as if someone might do a postmortem DNA test.
Maybe it was that argument, the one between Ted and John Richard, that had made Sandee think, Now I have enough suspects. Ginger and Ted Vikarios seemed to be furious with John Richard. In addition to the clipped hair, Sandee could leave pearls that looked like Ginger’s. And of course the very publicly jealous Courtney MacEwan was well known for those pink tennis balls.
And if all else failed, John Richard had a despised ex-wife who owned a gun, easily stolen.
And your theory on the death of Cecelia Brisbane? Reilly asked.
After all that, going over to Cecelia’s house, strangling her, running her car into the creek, all these would have been easy, almost an afterthought. Thanks for nothing, Mom.
What none of this explained, I told them, was the attack on me at the conference center the morning this whole thing had started. I believed I could rule out the Jerk.
There was only one person left: Courtney MacEwan, whose life I had ruined, she claimed. But I hadn’t been as unwilling as ever to take responsibility for his own desires. He’d wanted freedom to live on his own and do what he wanted. So he’d convinced Courtney, I firmly believed, that I was responsible for their breakup. And so she’d hired someone. Marla had even seen her paying him, although I couldn’t prove anything.
Courtney had seen Roger Mannis stalking my events, yelling at me about infractions. It bothered me that I couldn’t say without a doubt that Roger Mannis had messed up my food and attacked me. And yet he knew about the math of spoilage and how to turn off compressors that most people would just ignore. His skinny Uriah Heep body shape certainly matched the one of the person who’d shoved me out of the way and chopped the back of my neck
What could I do about this? I couldn’t get him fired on a hunch. With John Richard gone, would Roger Mannis become the new jerk in my life? Sort of like Moriarty, running through all of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures as the impersonation of evil?
Courtney and Roger weren’t talking, but that wasn’t the end of it. The next time I catered and Roger Mannis showed up to bother me, I was calling the cops. And I had a new gig coming up: A friend of Brewster Motley had tasted my food and wanted me to come into their law offices to prepare breakfast and lunch. I wasn’t going to worry about Roger Mannis now; I was going to prepare for him. He wasn’t going to hurt me again and get away with it.
And then, after all that, good began to happen.
The day after Sandee Brisbane ran into the fire, I called Ginger Vikarios and told her what I suspected about John Richard being the father of their grandson. Let’s get our boys together, I’d said. Ginger had burst into tears. Fourteen-year old Augustus Vikarios — Gus — would love to have a brother.
Along with her last will and testament, Talitha Vikarios had left her parents a separate set of instructions. It said that if Goldy Korman ever came into their lives and wanted to see Gus, it was okay, as long as she received the enclosed letter. When I visited Ginger Vikarios that same afternoon, she gave me it to me, along with heart-wrenching photos of Talitha with her little boy, who looked just like Arch, from infant to teenager.
Then, finally, I read Talitha’s letter to me.
Dear Goldy,
If you ever do get this letter, it means that I died . . . not a pleasant thought! But you should know that my Gus and your Arch are half brothers. I don’t imagine they look alike, but maybe they do. Anyway, I didn’t tell anybody that Dr. Korman and I had an affair. I thought I was in love, but never mind. He wasn’t. And the main thing is, I wanted you and Dr. Korman and Arch to be a happy family without me, and without Gus.
Oh, Goldy, please understand that I wanted my disappearance to be a gift to you. When I heard you were divorced, I wrote this letter and included it with my will, to be opened only if you somehow found out about Gus. I don’t want him to be a burden to you. I just want him to have a family besides my parents, whose career in the church was ruined by his appearance.
I tried to do the right thing, a lot of right things, really, and I’m not sure any of them turned out right. But I have a great boy, and I hope you can find it in your heart to love him.
Talitha Vikarios
IN-YOUR-FACE-STRAWBERRY PIE (1)
Crust
1 cup chopped filberts
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
2 cups all-purpose flour
In a wide, dry frying pan, toast the filberts over a medium-low heat, stirring, until they emit a nutty scent and have turned a very light brown. Allow to cool on paper towels.
Preheat the oven to 350 . Butter a 9-by-13-inch or 10-by-14-inch glass pan.
Mix the nuts, melted butter, and flour until thoroughly combined, then press this mixture evenly onto the bottom of the pan.
Bake the crust for about 20 to 30 minutes, or until the crust is set and has turned a very light brown. Set aside on a rack to cool completely before filling.
Topping (see note)
1 ½ pounds fresh strawberries, trimmed and hulled
2 cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 cup water
Mash the strawberries with a potato masher until they are crushed. Measure them; you should have about 2 cups. Mix the sugar with the cornstarch. In a large saucepan, heat the strawberries, sugar mixture, and water over medium heat, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved. Stirring constantly with a wooden spoon or heatproof spatula, raise the heat to medium-high (low altitude) or high (high altitude), and heat to boiling. (The mixture will be very hot, so be careful of splatters.) stirring constantly, boil the mixture for about one minute, or until the mixture is very thick and begins to clear. (It will not clear completely.) Remove from the heat and pour into a heatproof bowl. Allow to cool completely.
Filling
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted twice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ½ cups chilled heavy whipping cream
Beat the softened cream cheese with the confectioners’ sugar and vanilla until smooth. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until it holds soft peaks (Do not overbeat.) Fold the whipped cream thoroughly into the cream cheese mixture.
To assemble the pie, spread the filling over the cooled crust. Carefully spoon the cooled strawberry topping over the filling until it is completely covered.
Chill the pie thoroughly, at least 4 hours, before serving. If you are chilling the pie overnight, cover it with plastic wrap, which you remove just before cutting.
MAKES 24 SERVINGS
NOTE: For the topping, it is best to start with about 2 pounds of strawberries before trimming and hulling. You will end up with about 1 ½ pounds of strawberries. Also, you should prepare the topping before starting on the filling, because it needs to cool completely before being spread on the filling. Finally, this recipe makes about a cup more topping than you need for the pie. Leftover topping must be refrigerated and used within 2 or 3 days. It is delicious on vanilla ice cream or toasted, buttered English muffins.
IN-YOUR-FACE-STRAWBERRY-PIE (2)
Crust
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ pound (2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces and chilled
¼ cup chilled lard, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces and chilled
1/3 cup plus 1 to 3 tablespoons ice water
1 egg white, lightly beaten
additional sugar
In a large bowl (or in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade), whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt for 10 seconds.
Drop the first four tablespoons of chilled butter on top of the flour mixture, and cut in with two sharp knives (or pulse in the food processor) just until the mixture looks like tiny crumbs. (In the food processor, this will take less than a minute.) Repeat with the rest of the butter and the lard, keeping each unused portion of each one well chilled until it is time to cut it into the flour. The mixture will look like large crumbs when you finish adding all the butter and lard.
Sprinkle the water over the top of the mixture, and either mix with a spoon or pulse until the mixture just begins to hold together in clumps. If the mixture is too dry to hold together in clumps, add the additional water until it does. Place 12 ounces of this mixture into one 2-gallon zipped plastic bag. (This will be the top crust.) Put the remaining 15 ounces into another 2-gallon zipped plastic bag. (This will be the bottom crust.) If you do not have a scale, put a little bit more than half of the mixture into one bag, and a little bit less than half into the other. Pressing very lightly through the plastic, quickly gather each mixture into a rough circle in the center of the bag. Refrigerate the bags of dough until they are thoroughly chilled.
When you are ready to make the pie, preheat the oven to 425  . Have a rimmed cookie sheet ready to place underneath the pie.
Remove the bag of dough with the larger amount of dough from the refrigerator. Unzip the bag to ventilate it, then quickly roll out the larger crust (still inside the zip bag) to a circle approximately 10 inches in diameter. Using scissors, cut the plastic all the way around the bag and gently lift one side of the plastic. Place the bag, dough side down, in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. Gently remove the remaining piece of plastic so that the dough falls into the plate. Make the filling.
Filling
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup cornstarch
1 ½ to 2 cups granulated sugar, depending on the sweetness of the strawberries
6 cups washed, hulled, and halved strawberries
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, and sugar. Place the strawberries in a large bowl and sprinkle the flour mixture over it. Mix thoroughly.
Fill the pie with the strawberry mixture, then repeat the rolling-out process with the other crust, and place it on top of the filling. Seal the two crusts together around the edges, and flute the crust. Using a sharp knife, cut four or five 2-inch slits in the top crust, to ventilate the pie. Using a pastry brush, brush the top of the pie with just enough of the beaten egg white to cover it. Sprinkle the top crust with a small amount of sugar.
Bake the pie in the lower third of the preheated oven for 20 minutes, then slide the cookie sheet underneath the pie and lower the heat to 350 . Continue to bake the pie until thick juices bubble out of the slits, about 35 to 45 minutes.
Remove the cookie sheet and place the pie on a rack. Allow it to cool completely. (Do not serve the pie hot or warm.)
Serve with best-quality vanilla cream.
10-12 servings
PRIMAVERA PASTA SALAD
8 ounces pasta
¾ cup chopped fresh scallions
¾ cup grated fresh daikon
2 cups halved best-quality fresh cherry tomatoes
¾ cup finely chopped cilantro
¼ cup (or more0 vinaigrette (see recipe)
salt and pepper to taste
Cook the pasta and drain it, but do not rinse it. Allow it to cool to room temperature, stirring gently from tiem to time to keep it from sticking. Mix the pasta with all the chopped vegetables in a large serving bowl. Add vinaigrette until every ingredient is lightly dressed (not slathered.) Add more tomatoes, cilantro, or scallions to taste. Salt and pepper to taste. Chill. This salad is best served within 5 hours of being prepared.
4 servings
Vinaigrette
¼ cup best-quality red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
¾ to 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 cup best-quality olive oil
Whisk together vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper. Slowly whisk in the oil to make an emulsion. Whisk again before adding ¼ cup (or a bit more) to the salad. Refrigerate unused vinaigrette.
PARTY PORK CHOPS
4 1-inch thick pork chops
Brine
5 cups water
¼ cup kosher salt
¼ cup sugar
Marinade
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crumbled
1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
2 garlic cloves, prepared
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Rinse the pork chops with water and pat them dry with paper towels.
In a large bowl, whisk together the brine until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Place the pork chops in the brine, cover, and brine overnight in the refrigerator.
Drain the brine. Rinse chops in cold water let stand in cold water 10 minutes. Pat dry.
Whisk together the marinade ingredients. Place pork chops in the marinade and allow them to marinate for 1 hour. (While the pork chops are marinating, you can make the apples; recipe follows.)
Preheat the oven to 375 . On the stove, heat a large sauté pan over medium-high heat, then pour in 2 tablespoons oil and let it heat until it shimmers. Sear the chops for about 2 minutes on each side (until well caramelized), then flip and do the other sides for 2 minutes. You can either remove them from the pan and place them in a roasting pan, or, if your skillet can be placed in the oven, roast them directly in the pan.