Fatally Flaky (6 page)

I’d learned from one of the young men who worked for Victor that he tripled the cost of his “ingredients,” as he called the processed foods he bought…and he made out like the kind of bandito who’d once populated Aspen Meadow.

So I’d made an appointment to see Victor, and promised him—modestly? immodestly? I still didn’t know—some new taste sensations. I showed up at his door with platters of homemade new-potato salad with handpicked dill and crème fraîche—the same recipe we were going to have at Billie’s reception—marinated grilled chicken breasts, a flawless baby spinach salad, a loaf of homemade Cuban Bread, and a flourless chocolate cake. He’d tasted everything and curled his lip. Then he’d leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and turned me away with a curt, “Women don’t know how to cook.”

Pushing the memories away, I put the pie in the walk-in, pulled out a case of crab, and printed out my recipe for crab cakes. Then I checked that I had plenty of fresh celery, my only concern, and began mixing up the ingredients for all the extra crab cakes I would need for Billie Attenborough’s reception.

Women don’t know how to cook.
How Victor Lane’s cruel assessment had rung in my ears all the way home that day. As my van had chugged away from his house, I berated myself for allowing tears to sting my eyes, and slapped them away when they rolled down my cheeks. Still, self-pity ruled only until I swung my van into our gravel driveway. Don’t know how to cook, huh? We would just see about that.

Oddly, my own beloved godfather featured in this story early on. Jack happened to call me after I had stomped back into my kitchen with the remains of my offerings for Victor Lane. Jack had been saying for months how worried he was about me since I’d kicked out the Jerk. He repeatedly asked if there was anything he could do for me. Would I consider moving back to New Jersey? Did I need money? Could he at least pay for house keeping help for me? No, no, no thank you, I’d always said.

When Jack had called this particular time, I was still so upset I ended up giving him a blow by blow of my interview—a euphemism for rejection, if ever there was one—with Victor Lane, although I didn’t use his name. I think I was too afraid Jack might fly out and shoot him—Jack was a crack shot. But Jack had made no threats. He had only said quietly, “I think you should open your own catering business. And I’m going to send you the money to do it.”

I protested, of course, the way I always did. I wanted to make it on my own. Jack had said, “Gertie Girl? You got merit scholarships to go to prep school and college. You had a child while that creep treated you like dirt. You dumped the creep, you worked your way through an apprenticeship at a restaurant to learn the food business, and you think you haven’t already made it on your own?”

“Jack, don’t.” And then I burst out crying again.

“Gertie Girl! Don’t say another word. And stop crying. I’m sending you a check. No loan, mind you. A gift, and I’m paying the gift tax. I’ve made more money in the lawyering business than I know what to do with. Now get used to receiving a gift, dammit, and make this catering business work so you can show this new creep just who knows how to cook and who doesn’t.”

The next day, FedEx delivered a check for fifty thousand dollars. Aghast, I called Jack. I simply couldn’t accept a gift that large. Or maybe I could, I didn’t know…but I needed to thank my godfather, or do something. But Jack’s secretary said he was in court. He’d told his secretary to say he didn’t want to hear from me until I’d driven “some stupid creep,” as she gleefully put it, “into the poor house.”

It had taken only six months. I’d bought equipment and had my kitchen retrofitted to pass the vulture’s eye of the county health inspector. I’d found Alicia, my supplier; I’d had cards and brochures made up; I’d given clients who referred me to new clients a 10 percent discount. And I’d cooked. Madly, insanely, with all the energy of a woman scorned. Victor’s Vittles had quietly closed its doors.

But Victor Lane had not allowed me to take the processed cheese out of his mouth so quickly. He’d wormed his way into the affections of two food critics—one at a Denver newspaper, the other at a glossy magazine,
Front Range Quarterly.
He’d made sure that both critics skewered my business,
Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!
The critics said my food was unoriginal, boring, and left them hungry. Since André had taught me to have photos posted in my kitchen of every food critic working in the greater Denver metropolitan area, I’d been quite sure that neither of the poseurs had ever tasted my food or even attended one of my parties.

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you this behind-your-back stuff isn’t personal,” Jack had told me. “It’s as personal as it can be. But if you keep doing the work you were hired to do by clients who love you, then this new creep can blow his despair over you driving him out of business out his ass.”

Like most lawyers, Jack did have a way with words. I’d refused to give up my catering business, which had continued to thrive, thank you very much. And Victor Lane had bought the Creek Ranch Hotel…and turned it into Gold Gulch Spa. The most delicious irony of all was that he’d hired a woman to run his kitchen. Yolanda, my friend, had confided that Victor was an absolute pain in the behind, but the spa clients, 99 percent of whom were women, were as addicted to Gold Gulch Spa as crack smokers were to their pipes. Even though Victor never, but ever, gave her any credit, she knew she deserved it…and, she said, the women who slipped hundred-dollar bills into her apron pocket at the end of their stays seemed to agree.

What ever,
as Arch would say. I didn’t wish Victor Lane harm. I just wanted him to stay out of my way. Over the last four years, we’d been successful at dodging each other. But with Billie Attenborough scheduling her wedding and reception at Gold Gulch Spa, my carefully crafted avoidance of Victor Lane was about to come to an abrupt halt.

I finished molding the last crab cake, and counted them. I figured Billie could invite an extra seventy-five people to her guest list and we’d still be in good shape. I covered the platter and placed it in the walk-in, just in the nick of time, as it turned out. The doorbell rang: Jack and Marla.

Through the peephole, Marla waved at me with crazed, teen-type enthusiasm. I wondered how much of that scotch and bourbon they’d had time to ingest.

“Finally, finally!” Marla shrieked when I let her inside. The two of them stomped inside in a cloud of whiskey scent. “We’re starving, do you have anything cooking?”

“Crab cakes or pork ragout? I’ve got plenty of extra crab cakes for the Attenborough reception, and the pork ragout is yummy—”

“Both, then!” Marla replied.

I took their coats while they ushered themselves into the kitchen. Marla’s joviality was forced, while Jack, who had tightness around his eyes and wore a strained expression, looked as if he’d just lost his best friend. Which, of course, he had.

What, oh what, could I do to help my dear, sweet godfather recover? He had been uncompromisingly generous and kind to me my entire life, and I had no idea—none—how to help him.

I
thought you were having the churchwomen over for dinner,” I said to Marla as she dug into a crab cake I’d sautéed for her.

“Dessert. You made my pie, didn’t you?” When I nodded, Marla lifted her chin in Jack’s direction. He was rubbing his forehead. He’d refused any food. Marla caught my eye and shook her head.

“Jack,” I said gently, “let me call Craig Miller for you. He’s a doctor, maybe you should have a tranquilizer or something.” When Jack grunted, I went on, “Look, maybe Craig knows a psychologist or a psychiatrist or someone professional, anyway, someone who could come out to the house to talk to you. Will you let me, please?”

“Absolutely not,” said Jack. He took a deep breath. “No doctors, please. I’m a big boy. I can handle this.”

“Jack!” I exclaimed as Marla shrugged. “How about Father Pete?” I persisted. “Or Lucas? I know either one of them would want to be with you, if that would somehow make you feel better—”

Jack managed a wan smile. “Gertie Girl. I’m fine. Just tired.” He frowned and looked around the kitchen, as if noticing for the first time that it was only the three of us there. “Where’s Tom? Arch?”

“Arch is at his half brother’s house. Tom’s coming home late.” I checked the clock: almost 6. “When are the churchwomen arriving, Marla?”

“Seven, but I have to be back home by half past six. The car-service guy is coming back for me. Do you have any more crab cakes? And how about a bowl of that ragout?”

I fixed her both. Since Marla had had her heart attack, I automatically prepared most of my main dishes with low-fat this, low-carbohydrate that, or reduced-calorie the other thing. If she ate dessert, I figured that was her problem. Jack, who’d had two heart attacks, had no desire to have me lecture him about anything, as he said he already got plenty of “that kind of tripe,” as he called it, from his son, Lucas.

I didn’t want to bring up Doc Finn’s death, and it was clear that neither Marla nor Jack did either. But since Jack’s conversations with me usually centered on the issues he was having adjusting to life in the West, or where he and Finn had just gone fishing, we suddenly had a cavernous space in our conversation. When Marla hopped up to heat another crab cake, I finally grabbed at a conversational straw.

“You’re going to get sick of those before Billie Attenborough’s wedding,” I commented. “It’s day after tomorrow, remember?”

Marla and Jack groaned in unison.

Marla said, “I got a call today from a secretarial service that Charlotte is using. All the guests are being notified of the new venue for the wedding. Gold Gulch Spa? Please. What are we supposed to do, stuff ourselves silly at the reception, then go work out, then relax in the hot springs pool?”

“How ’bout,” Jack interjected, “we just pig out, then go rest in the hot pool?” After asking that question, though, he went back into the daze that had enveloped him since he’d arrived at the house.

“Sounds good to me,” replied Marla. “But get this—directions are being e-mailed, faxed, or delivered by messenger to each and every wedding guest, depending on how technologically current you are. Changing where the festivities are being held must mess up your plans somewhat, eh, Goldy?”

“I don’t even want to go there,” I replied. “I mean, I’ll go to the spa, but I sure don’t want to talk about how Billie’s addition of fifty more guests is screwing up my life. Charlotte’s coming over to night so we can hammer out the details. I have to drive to Gold Gulch tomorrow morning, to see what our flow is going to be, where the tables will be set up, all that jazz.”

“And then there’s the dreaded Victor Lane to deal with,” Marla added. She knew all about my dealings with the man who thought women couldn’t cook.

“Victor Lane?” Jack suddenly seemed to come out of his stupor, and his gray eyebrows knit in puzzlement. “Victor Lane? Why does that name sound depressingly familiar?”

Oh, dear. I found it hard to believe that Jack, the man who’d been going out with Charlotte Attenborough virtually since he arrived in town, would not have heard of Victor Lane and his vaunted Gold Gulch Spa. Charlotte was well known as a Gold Gulch fixture. To forestall discussion of a subject that could upset Jack even more, I offered Jack and Marla something else to drink. When they declined, I poured myself another glass of sherry.

But Marla didn’t take to forestallment. “Don’t tell me Goldy hasn’t told you about Victor Lane of Victor’s Vittles. Victor Lane told Goldy that women don’t know how to cook!”

Jack nodded at me appraisingly. “That son of a bitch? That same guy from all those years ago?”

I nodded and took a large slug of sherry.

“All those years ago?” Marla asked in puzzlement. “This is the guy from all what years ago?” Marla shook a bejeweled finger at me accusingly. “Goldy, did you have a fling with Victor Lane and not tell me?”

I laughed so hard sherry shot out of my nose and I started to cough. Marla took that as confirmation that I had
not
rolled in the hay with Victor.

“I wonder why he would ever say that women don’t know how to cook,” Jack said. “Tell that to all the women across America who find themselves standing over a stove for much of their lives.”

“Look, Jack,” I said soothingly, “if you hadn’t helped me see that Victor was as full of crap as he was of himself, there might well be no Goldilocks’ Catering here in Aspen Meadow.”

The doorbell rang, and Marla groaned.

“Just as I’m about to get some truly juicy gossip about Aspen Meadow’s renowned asshole spa owner,” she said, “my car-service guy arrives. Dammit! Now you two need to hold that thought, because I want to hear all about Victor Lane when we get together next.” She eyed the platter. “May I take a couple of crab cakes, Goldy? I’m so hungry.”

“Yeah, sure. I made lots extra for Billie Attenborough’s shindig. And don’t forget your pie.”

I loaded her down with goodies, and she took off for the front door, where whoever was there was persistently knocking.

“Oops, it’s not my guy,” said Marla, as she checked the peephole. “It’s an Attenborough,” she singsonged, “incoming!” She put her platters of food down on the hall table.

“Already?” I asked.

“Yes yes,” Marla singsonged again.

“I haven’t called her all day. She’s going to be angry,” Jack said dejectedly.

“Charlotte, darling!” Marla swept the front door open. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming to the dessert fund-raiser to night at my place? Don’t break my heart.”

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Charlotte trilled. “What are you doing here, Marla? Don’t you have guests to get ready for? You smell like liquor. Where’s Goldy?”

Jack uttered a swear word under his breath.

“In the kitchen!” Marla sang. “Oops, there’s my car service!” She picked up her food platters and sashayed out. “See you later, everybody!”

I knew I should have been more ready for Charlotte, but I wasn’t. The thought occurred to me that maybe she should tend to Jack. Charlotte Attenborough had been a nurse in her previous life, before her well-insured husband died of his bleeding ulcer. According to Marla, Charlotte had used the insurance money to buy a struggling local magazine with the uninspiring name
Aspen Meadow Monthly.
She’d transformed the publication into a glossy, widely read and admired lifestyle rag,
Mountain Homes.
Charlotte herself was owner, editor, and chief pooh-bah, and as such was greatly admired around town. She’d offered me free monthly full-page advertising for a year as an added incentive for doing her daughter’s wedding. I’d joyously accepted…but that had all been nine months ago, and since then, I’d had second, third, fourth, ad infinitum thoughts telling me that no advertising was worth getting a bleeding ulcer myself.

“Goldy, do you have my new contract?”

“No. Sorry, Charlotte,” I said. I didn’t offer any excuses, such as having my godfather’s best friend found dead in a ravine, dealing with a combative biological father at a wedding, or even actually having had another wedding reception to cater today. “I’ll get right on it.” I turned to my computer, booted it up, and began typing changes to our contract that would reflect additional guests and a change of venue. “Would you like a drink, or some food?” I asked as I pressed Print. “We have lots of everything.”

“Jack,” Charlotte said, surprised, “what are you doing here?”

I stopped what I was doing to turn back to them. I’d told Tom that Charlotte was perfectly preserved. Like jam? he’d asked. I’d merely shaken my head.

I knew Billie was thirty-six, and Charlotte had made a point of telling me she’d given birth to her only child when she was twenty. But there was no way Charlotte Attenborough was in her midfifties; she was sixty-five if she was a day. She wore her short gray-blond hair swept up in what boys from the fifties would have called a ducktail. She was at least five feet eight inches tall, but the ramrod-straight way she held her slender self, shoulders back, abs tight, made her look more like six feet. This night, she wore a midcalf, dark gray sheath-style dress. Despite its fashionable draping, her attire gave her the look of a drill sergeant.

“Well?” she said to Jack.

As if on cue, both of our family’s animals—a big, floppy, exceptionally affectionate bloodhound named Jake, and a long-haired feline named Scout—made their presence known at our back door. I’d called them to come in when I’d first arrived home, but neither had been interested then.

“I’ll let in the pets.” Jack leaped up from his chair and went to the back door before I could say,
Careful, they’re going to be muddy!

Which, in retrospect, would have been a very good idea, but not nearly as much fun. Charlotte, who clearly did not like dogs, flinched when Jake came bounding in. She screamed when he jumped up on her and muddied her impeccable sheath. The thick mud on his paws might not have done so much damage to Charlotte’s dress if she hadn’t then shrieked, “Stop, you!” and tried to whack Jake away. Even though I called him and tried to snag his collar, Charlotte’s recoiling move made Jake want to be friends even more, so that he sprang up again on Charlotte, who tried to bat him away. “You stupid dog!” she cried. “Go away!”

Jake, who didn’t like to be called stupid, began whimpering, and again vaulted up on Charlotte, who had turned her backside on him, which meant Jake’s paws landed on the reverse side of the sheath, which I figured was now pretty much ruined.

“I’m so sorry, Charlotte, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating. My godfather, who had tried less successfully than I had to contain Jake, slumped in defeat on a kitchen chair.

When I finally managed to snag Jake’s leash, I led him out of the kitchen. Scout the cat, who was much better at figuring out when he wasn’t wanted, had already slunk away. I managed to corral the two of them in the pet-containment area, where I gave them a perfunctory drying off with fresh towels that I kept in their little home for just this purpose.

Oh, Lord, but I wished Tom would come home.

“Well, Charlotte,” I said in my conciliatory voice when I returned to the kitchen, “again, I’m sorry. Would you like to see the contract?”

She was at our sink, where she was rubbing her muddied dress with a wet paper towel. When she faced me, her eyes were slits. “This is a disaster,” she said, and a cold finger of guilt ran down my spine.

“Dogs do get muddy when it rains,” Jack said, attempting mournfulness. “It’s, what do you call it? A force of nature.”

“Stop it,” Charlotte retorted. “I’ve been trying to phone
you
all day, too, but you won’t return my calls.”

Now Jack’s voice was genuinely mournful. “My best friend was found dead in a ravine, Charlotte.”

She turned to him, startled. “Who, Finn? What was he doing in a ravine?” Her tone implied that death could be avoided if one could but stay out of ravines. Jack just shook his head.

“It was a car accident, Charlotte,” I said in a low voice.

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“I don’t think so.”

“This is a tragedy,” she said to Jack. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” said Jack disconsolately.

Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and so I took a deep breath. “Now, Charlotte, here are the contract changes.” I handed her the sheet.

She perused the paper. “This looks fine.”

Charlotte kept glancing at Jack, who would not meet her gaze. I reflected once more on how much beyond me it was to know how or why these two had managed to keep a relationship going for a day, much less four months. Charlotte was elegant, perfectionistic, and expected to get her way, even if she had to pay for it. Her house in Flicker Ridge looked like a furniture showcase. Jack was generous, openhearted, and a slob, and the house he was renovating looked like a tornado had blown off the roof and thoroughly jumbled the interior…and no one had bothered to clean up since.

From the beginning of their odd relationship, I’d suspected that there was more desire to keep things going on Charlotte’s side than there was on Jack’s. He told me he’d been gentle, but firm, when she said she wanted him to stop spending so much time with Doc Finn. Doc Finn was his friend, and Jack wanted to go fishing and do…well, what ever his friend wanted. Charlotte had said he should want to spend more time with her.

Jack had demurred. But Charlotte had persevered. In fact, the previous month, she had confided to me that she expected to become engaged to Jack very soon. After a couple of weeks had gone by, I’d gently hinted around to Jack about this, as in, “Do you think you’d ever be wanting me to do your wedding reception?” He’d shaken his head at the suggestion, and told me he had no plans to get married again. His first wife had died of cancer before I’d known her. All this made me think that there were no nuptial festivities for Jack and Charlotte in the foreseeable future.

“I suppose that’s the cleanest I’m going to get it.” Charlotte had put the contract down and was working on her dress again. Now she turned away from the sink and gave me a forlorn look, as if the dog, and Jack’s unhelpfulness, had hurt her deeply, and I was supposed to do something about it.