Fatally Flaky (22 page)

I speared the chicken breasts with a meat thermometer, put them in the oven, and began hunting for the other ingredients. When the phone rang, I was just finishing draining juice from the mandarin oranges and pineapple tidbits. I figured the ringing phone was Yolanda calling me back, and I picked it up quickly and delivered my singsongy business greeting.

“Goldy, are you out of your mind?” Tom spluttered.

“Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”

“Oops? You don’t need to help Yolanda. What? You want to go out and mess up another crime scene—”

“Wait a minute,” I protested, as I measured out mayonnaise. “What was the first crime scene I messed up?”

“You know I’m talking about breaking into Jack’s house,” Tom said, with an attempt at patience. “And now we’ve had—”

“Hold on,” I interrupted as I nabbed chutney from the walk-in. “I didn’t break into Jack’s house, and it isn’t a crime scene—”

“Wait, now, Miss G. Within hours of Jack dying, you used a dubious legal basis to employ Jack’s own keys to enter his house, without knocking or ringing, according to Lucas.”

“Lucas needs to make fewer accusations, and hit fewer people on the side of the head,” I replied, indignant. “Listen, Tom,” I said, as I worked on my own patience, “I’m sorry if I upset you, as well as Lucas, but I was just trying to figure out why Jack—”

“Where’s Marla?” Tom demanded.

“I sent her home to nap.”

“Nap? Why does she need to nap?”

“She had too much to drink over here, what with the Irish coffee this morning, and scotch and soda this afternoon. Plus, she’s going to try to come out to the spa this week, too. For that, she needed to rest up.”

Tom said, “Jesus.” Then he paused, thinking. “If Boyd can’t go out there with you, you’re not going.”

“All right.” The call-waiting beeped, and I glanced at the phone’s readout, which is what I should have done before picking up to hear Tom being angry. “Yolanda’s ready to talk to me. I’ve gotta go.”

After Tom warned me again not to go into potentially dangerous situations, he signed off. Sighing, I clicked over to Yolanda.

“Are you out of your mind, Goldy?” Yolanda asked me.

“Don’t start. Tom’s already bawled me out.”

“How long has it been since you worked in a restaurant?”

“Come on, Yolanda. Let me help. Oh, and Tom says I have to have Boyd with me if I’m going to be working out there.”

“There’s not enough room in that kitchen for you, me, my two assistants, and a cop,” Yolanda said flatly, “even if the cop is kind of cute. There’s hardly enough room as it is. Plus, Victor’s such a jerk, he’d never let you work in there for no good reason.”

“You can tell him I’m repaying you for helping with the wedding.”

“He’ll never buy it.”

I pondered the salad dressing I was making, as well as the situation with Yolanda. She was right about the Victor piece of this.

“How about this,” I proposed. “You call Victor and tell him you have appendicitis. Or something. And it’s an ailment so sudden and dreadful that you have to go into the hospital. You tell him you’ve asked me to take over, since we used to work together in a restaurant, and I know what I’m doing. Then I take your place for two or three days, and Boyd helps me. We manage in the small space, you come back after those days off, and I pay you your entire salary for a week.”

“Why do you want to get in there so badly?” Yolanda demanded. “I hate Victor, but I really need this job. If you make trouble for him, he might fire me.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said, although in the far reaches of my brain, the ones that oversaw vengeance for not hiring me, I saw making trouble for Victor as a plus. Still, though, Victor was Yolanda’s boss, and I really didn’t want to create problems for my old friend.

“Uh, Goldy? You didn’t answer my question. What do you think you’re going to find out at the spa?”

I set the blender on High and walked into the other room. Should I explain to Yolanda about the note from Jack? Well, if I was trusting her to lie for me, then perhaps I should. So I told her about Jack dying after being attacked at the spa. “Did you see anyone skulking around outside? Did anyone come through the kitchen to use your exit?”

“I’ve already talked to the cops about this. We were working hard, you know that. Did you notice anyone going in or out?”

“No. I wish I had.”

“And if anyone came in or out, I certainly don’t know when they were around. The one thing I remember? Jack crept through, made some kind of joke, and said he was going out for a smoke. Then he slipped through the door we use for putting out our dirty aprons and towels. He, uh, you know, didn’t come back in.”

I took a deep breath and told Yolanda about the note Jack had written for me in the hospital.

“Huh? He wrote ‘Gold’ on a piece of paper,” said Yolanda, incredulous, “and you think he was referring to the spa, and not you?”

“He didn’t call me Goldy. He called me Gertie Girl.”

Yolanda paused. “Did he write anything else on the paper?”

“Yes. He wrote ‘Keys’ and ‘Fin,’ which was the name of his best friend. Although he didn’t spell Finn’s name correctly. Look, Yolanda, does Victor ever have you make up smoothies in the Smoothie Cabin?”

“No, Victor does all that. He makes up batches of them, and then has some of the staff pour them for the guests, usually. It’s not as if it’s a secret recipe, he tells me, but he still won’t let me do it. It’s less work for me, anyway.”

“Do you think he would let me do it?”

“I’m sure he would
not
. He says he has to monitor the calories the clients get.”

Right,
I thought. “Do you think Isabelle would let me into the Smoothie Cabin?”

“I doubt it, but she might, even though Victor told her he was going to fire her if she let anybody else in there.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to her when I get out there.”

“She can’t fake appendicitis, too.”

“Don’t worry, Yolanda. And thanks.”

“Goldy,” she replied, “you should have your head examined.”

“Will you call Victor and pave the way for me?”

“Yes, and you don’t have to pay me all that money.”

“Yes, I do. Jack was my godfather.” My voice cracked, and I silently cursed it. “I loved him, and I want to find out what he was looking for in the Smoothie Cabin. I want to find out what happened to him.”

“The cops have been out at the spa all day!” She sounded exasperated. “What do you think you’ll find that they missed?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I know I’m not going to rest until I at least make an effort on behalf of Jack.”

Yolanda exhaled again. “That’s why you don’t have to pay me.” She paused. “I didn’t need my appendix anyway.”

I
woke in a sweat before the alarm went off. Our room wasn’t hot, and I was not menopausal (yet). Hmm. I glanced at our clock: not quite five. I slid out of bed and tiptoed over to flip the switch, to keep the clock from awakening Tom. Perhaps worry about the upcoming day had jolted me out of sleep. Those worries included: Would Victor Lane, who long ago had insisted to me that women in general and I in particular couldn’t cook, be nice to me? (Fat chance.) Would the spa clients like the food I prepared? (Not if they were anything like Billie.) Would I feel any better if I found out anything on the subject of why Jack had been attacked? (Too early to tell.)

Then again, maybe anxieties about the upcoming day had not awakened me. Our bedroom was filled with unusually bright light. I pulled back the curtain and couldn’t believe that after all our weeks of rain, sunshine streaking through the pines and aspens now dappled our street.

I veered away from looking at Jack’s house and instead spread out my yoga mat. I lay down and tried to summon an attitude of optimism to match the weather. But that would entail forgetting that my dear godfather was dead. It would also mean consigning to the River of Forgetfulness the colossal argument I’d had with Tom the night before.

As I stretched and breathed and tried unsuccessfully to clear my mind, I recalled how the first thing that had happened after dinner was that Yolanda had called me back. She’d phoned Victor with the bad news of her sudden attack of appendicitis and having to be down at Southwest Hospital. Instead of being compassionate, Victor had started yelling, no surprise. Yolanda had grunted and groaned her way through a fake pain attack and managed to say she’d hired a replacement, who was yours truly. Victor had been pissed, she said, laughing, but he’d agreed to let her off until Thursday dinner, when she’d “better be back, or be fired.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. “Who’s he going to get if he lets you go?”

“Hey, Goldy, good question! But I groaned big, and he told me to stop. So I managed to thank him. I also told him I’d call my assistants so they could be there to help you with breakfast. You don’t have to show up until quarter to six. Can you manage that?”

“Absolutely,” I promised. “Do you think he suspects you were faking?”

“That’s the only thing that worries me. I keep telling him he needs to see a shrink, get on some antiparanoia medicine.”

“Jeez.” I remembered Victor blowing his top about Jack’s search of the Smoothie Cabin, and how he’d questioned me as to what my godfather had been up to. Had I put on a good enough act? I wondered.

“Totally. But listen,” she warned, “in addition to Boyd, you might need Julian to help you with dinner. It’s not the extra cooking that makes the last meal of the day difficult. It’s the serving. The clients just get really, really hungry by the end of the day.”

“If Julian can’t help, then I’ll find someone else.”

Yolanda had promised to e-mail me the menu for Tuesday so I would know what to expect. She also told me the recipes were stored in the spa’s kitchen computer, and gave me the password: weight. She made me swear to call her if I needed her back. And she still didn’t want me to pay her. I told her I’d had lots of catering assignments this summer, was up to my chef’s hat in money, and had a free week, to boot. She laughed and said she was capable of making a rapid recovery. I thanked her again and signed off.

Then I called Julian, who said, “Oh no, I don’t think I can do low-fat food.” When I told him the emphasis was on health, not weight loss, he said, “Okay, I’m down for it.” Which was Julian-speak for yes, he would help.

Tom, unfortunately, had been even angrier than Victor Lane when he heard I’d had Yolanda lie so I could do a fill-in job at Gold Gulch. I’d broken the news to him when we were chopping the last ingredients for the Chilled Curried Chicken Salad. Tom had stopped slicing, put down his knife, and shaken his head.

“I told you on the phone, Goldy, you’re not going out there again unless Boyd goes with you.”

“And I said that was fine! He just has to be there at a quarter to six.”

Tom called Boyd with the specifics, and nodded curtly when he got off the phone. So Boyd must have been down for it, too.

I handed Tom a spoon with a dollop of the curry dressing. “It’ll be better when it’s chilled.”

He tasted and nodded. “Know what, Miss G.? You’d be better if you chilled.”

“Very funny.”

“Not meaning to be. Look, investigating the Finn case is proving more difficult than we’d anticipated, because of all the mud and trash down in that ravine next to the highway. If I have to worry about you and what you’re up to every minute, then my own work becomes more challenging than my cardiologist wants.”

“What cardiologist?” I asked. I spooned the pineapple, mandarin oranges, raisins, shreds of roast chicken, and chopped red onion into a crystal bowl and tossed them together. Then I ladled on creamy dollops of the curry-and-chutney-laced dressing, and stirred again. “When did you start going to a cardiologist? And does this mean I should have used low-fat mayonnaise?”

Tom began washing the cutting boards. “Now who’s being the funny one? Anyway, all that is beside the point.”

“Look, Tom, I’m insisting on going out to the spa because Jack wanted me to. I feel it in my bones.”

“So much for empirical analysis,” Tom said dryly. “Tell me: do you feel it in your bones that Jack wanted you to get hurt? Hurt the way he was, I mean?”

I gave him a look full of vinegar. “He wrote ‘Gold’ on a piece of paper—”

“Ah, the infamous meaningless note.”

“And remember, Boyd will be with me—”

“Yeah, I had to take him off a security detail for the governor, so if the gov gets whacked in the next three days, it’s on you.”

I ignored this, because I knew Boyd wouldn’t have been taken off an important security detail unless they’d found someone to replace him. “So,” I went on, “Boyd will be helping me. The bistro where Julian works is closed for the month of August, and he’s going to come over and lend a hand, too. And there will only be sixty-one guests at the spa. Piece of cake.”

Tom rolled his eyes at the ceiling instead of making a joke about the cake.

“Tom! I will be fine.”

He bristled. “Fine? Fine?”

“I’ll take my cell phone.”

“Service out there is spotty. That’s what we discovered when we were looking into the attack on Jack.” His shoulders slumped. “All right, if you’re determined to do this, Boyd sticks to you like epoxy, and you go through the spa switchboard if you need me.”

I agreed. I called Arch. Gus had already invited him to stay at his house for “their last free week before school starts.” So much for Gus’s grandparents’ school-supply shopping plans.

“It’s not like you’re going to prison next week,” I said to Arch.

Arch said, “Mom, you haven’t been in an American high school lately.”

I didn’t want to argue, so I told him I’d be back Thursday. Still, I sensed Tom was worried about this little expedition, Yolanda was anxious that her fake illness would be found out, Marla was bitching about going to numerous exercise classes every day, and Julian was okay with healthful recipes, but was dead set against cooking low-fat food.

Other than all that, I thought as I stretched into my last asana, everything was, as we say in food service, peachy.

I took a quick shower and crept down to the kitchen, where I filled an insulated mug with ice, splashed in a goodly dose of whipping cream, and pulled four shots of espresso for a volcanic Summertime Special. I took a long swig, then shuddered when I thought of the menus Yolanda had e-mailed me for that day. For dessert, the clients were getting canned fruit with low-cal whipped topping. That didn’t sound too healthful to me.

When I’d loaded the cooking equipment I couldn’t live without into the van, my eye snagged on the facade of Jack’s Victorian. The unfinished front porch, with its higgledy-piggledy assortment of flowerpots, made the place look even more forlorn. I looked away, down at the Grizzly Saloon, where an early morning worker was sweeping the porch. By half past ten, the place would be filled with patrons—usually men, sad to say—who couldn’t get through the day without booze, and plenty of it.

I gunned the engine: time to get out to Gold Gulch Spa. Even if Tom thought I was nuts, I knew what I wanted to do: find out why someone had killed Doc Finn. He’d been investigating something. Then Jack had searched the Smoothie Cabin. Maybe Doc Finn and/or Jack had found what they were looking for, and were threatening to go public with it.

If either one or both of them had gathered evidence proving some kind of wrongdoing, then that would be it—finito, fin, the end—for the spa.

If the whistleblower had been Doc Finn, then the note in his trash reading “Have analyzed” could be the key. Had Doc Finn taken a sample from the spa…from the Smoothie Cabin…and put it into a vial? And had he received the news back as to what was in the vial? Had he confronted Victor, and if so, had the old doctor been lethally punished for his efforts?

And how did Billie Attenborough, now Billie Miller, play into this, if at all? She and Doc Finn, whom she had already professed to hate, had been having a large, loud argument out at Gold Gulch Spa right before he was killed. Billie had said Doc Finn had told her she shouldn’t try to lose weight so quickly. I still didn’t believe this. I couldn’t remember when Craig Miller had said he and Billie would be leaving for the Greek Isles for their honeymoon…I just recalled how much I wanted them to be on it, instead of hanging around Aspen Meadow.

I also wanted to know what the hell Charlotte was up to. To my mind, she hadn’t really explained what her shoes were doing in Doc Finn’s Porsche.

Was my theory about Victor possibly having it in for Doc Finn and/or Jack likely or unlikely? What was Lucas up to, if anything? Where did Charlotte, Billie, and her new husband fit in, if at all?

I pressed my lips together and wound up Upper Cottonwood Creek Road on the way to Gold Gulch Spa. No question, it would pay to be extremely vigilant.

My cell phone rang, startling me out of my reverie.

“Okay, boss,” came Julian’s crackling voice, “I’m on the interstate and Sergeant Boyd is right behind me. He said to call you and tell you not to drive into the spa until we catch up. Tom’s orders.”

“Well,” I said with a nervous laugh, “make it snappy.” I glanced at the car clock: half past five.

“I would,” replied Julian, “but remember, Boyd’s a cop, and he’s driving like a cop. Right behind me. Slowly.”

“Is he in a police car?”

“No, but I have a feeling that if I go twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, he’ll get out the handcuffs.”

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER,
the five of us—Boyd, Julian, Yolanda’s two female assistants, and yours truly—were madly scrambling eggs, toasting whole wheat bread, and swirling soft tofu with spring water, to mix into oatmeal. The two breakfast servers were filling the skim milk and decaf coffee machines.

“I thought you said this was a high-class place,” Boyd commented as he peered into the walk-in refrigerator. “I’m not seeing any expensive low-fat breakfast meat in here. In fact, I’m not seeing any kind of breakfast meat in here.”

“Better for your arteries, Mr. Policeman,” Julian commented.

“Yeah?” said Boyd. “Kiss my ass, Mr. Vegetarian.”

“Boys, boys,” I scolded gently, “this is no place for a food fight, even a verbal one.”

But the two of them were already racing around the kitchen’s big island like a couple of kids. Julian snapped a dish towel at Boyd. Boyd snatched a wet pot scrubber and hurled it at Julian. The two kitchen assistants began giggling as the fight escalated to Boyd and Julian swinging kitchen implements at each other. The assistants’ laughter reached hyena levels. While the two guys banged around and yelled taunts, I prayed that Victor Lane was far away. I also began to wonder where the seven thousand dollars a week that each client paid to visit Gold Gulch went. The kitchen did not hold a single piece of fresh fruit, and only the most desultory collection of fresh vegetables. Frozen chickens, thawing for to night’s broiling and tomorrow’s lunch, had been bought in bulk, as had the pork tenderloins that I was fixing for the next night’s dinner. Why would Yolanda put up with preparing such foods, instead of insisting on high-quality, fresh ingredients? She must really need this paycheck. I frowned.

Of course, there was no way I was going to tell Victor Lane how to run his spa. Still, when I’d started out in catering, it had taken me a while to figure out how to calculate what exactly I had to charge to make a profit in food service, and Victor, I was sure, had done the same thing. The basic rule of thumb was that you took your raw ingredients and tripled them. As far as I could figure, Victor Lane was paying less than two bucks a day per person for his raw materials. So if the clients were paying a thousand dollars a day for food, shelter, and exercise, I wondered how much the shelter, cleaning, and exercise classes cost.

Charlotte had told me Gold Gulch was almost always full, with a waiting list, even year-round. Victor must be making a killing. But if that was true, then why was he trying to convince Marla, Lucas, and Charlotte to invest in Gold Gulch?

While I was wondering about all this, Boyd and Julian picked up sauté pans and clanked them together like swords. I tried to filter out the racket while looking more closely at the menus Yolanda had posted in the kitchen: Scrambled Eggs and Canned Fruit Cocktail for this morning; Baked Tuna with Tomato Salad for lunch; Broiled Chicken, Cauliflower, and Broccoli for to night, with packaged Angel Food Cake for dessert. If you were allergic to anything, you got yogurt. Whoopee!

Tomorrow the clients were getting more Scrambled Eggs with Toast, or Oatmeal with Tofu and Sugarless Applesauce for breakfast; Chicken Salad with fat-free mayo for lunch—I gagged—and Roast Pork Tenderloin with more Sugarless Applesauce plus Steamed Green Beans for dinner, with yet more Angel Food Cake. Another day of Awful, or offal, depending on how you looked at it.