Just Desserts : A Bed-and-breakfast Mystery (2 page)

“Brooke,” supplied Judith, waiting for the phone to be answered at the Brodie residence four blocks away in distance, but a world apart in hard cash.

A breathless Oriana gulped her hello, explaining that she had been on her way between the main body of the house and the guest quarters over the triple garage. “It’s the only part not being fumigated,” she said. “Oh, my lungs! I shall have to give up practice this afternoon.”

Judith was tempted to suggest that Oriana simply give up, period, but instead conveyed her message with forced enthusiasm.

“But how fortunate!” cried Oriana. “Otto will be ecstatic!”

Ecstasy as embodied by the porcine Otto Brodie struck Judith as a vision of Porky Pig hoofing madly away on his stout little trotters. To Oriana, she merely expressed pleasure and asked if any members of the party suffered from allergies.

During the first month of her tenure as mistress of Hillside Manor, a superior court judge had been hauled away in an ambulance after eating crab dip. Judith had suspected that her son had substituted Sweetums’s cat tuna, but discovered later that the judge had a violent seafood allergy and that his wife was furious with him for not inquiring as to the in-gredients in Hillside’s hors d’oeuvres. Since then, Judith had been careful about her guests’ dietary eccentricities, feeling that the screeching arrival of aid cars and emergency vehicles might give Hillside a bad name.

“Allergies,” mused Oriana, sounding not unlike Tosca mulling over the choice between surrendering to Baron Scarpia and jumping out the window of the Farnese Pal-JUST DESSERTS / 7

ace. “Otto has sinus, but mostly from dust and pollen. As for the others, I think not…but you must remember I haven’t been stepmother to Otto’s brood for all that long. Of course, Harvey is a doctor. As for the fortune-teller, she won’t be dining with us except perhaps for dessert.”

“Fortune-teller? Dessert?” Judith grimaced into the phone.

“Actually, I do breakfast, not dinner…”

“…promptly at seven-thirty, or Otto gets…unruly. And Harvey sulks, while Lance tends to wander off. Mentally, that is, and Guinevere is never on time unless you absolutely insist on punctuality for meals.” Oriana had interrupted like an orchestra conductor giving instructions to a slightly dim-witted lead singer. Judith’s protests died aborning.

Facing a hopeless task, she decided to take advantage of what appeared to be a good thing. “Roast beef is ten dollars a plate, salmon eight dollars, and chicken, ah, seven-fifty. I only do one entree per party. Which will it be?” she asked cheerfully. If Oriana expected dinner as well as breakfast, she’d damn well pay for it.

There was a pause at the other end. “We pay for the roast beef or salmon or chicken? I didn’t realize…” A deep masculine voice rumbled in the background. “Roast beef,” Oriana said quickly. “Cream puffs for dessert, if you will, and do make one for the fortune-teller.” The phone clicked in Judith’s ear.

“Cream puffs?” Judith shrieked into the handset. “I should have told her they’d cost another two-fifty each!”

“Cream puff, my foot,” muttered Gertrude, lighting up another cigarette while Sweetums preened against her baggy stockings. “Otto’s no cream puff, he’s one tough customer.

When he isn’t bawling, that is. Hey!” She grabbed the walker and swung it at Sweetums. “Beat it, you mangy little fleabag!” Sweetums pounced; Gertrude retaliated with the rubber-tipped leg of the walker. Cat and contraption became an orange and silver blur.

Judith ignored the encounter; she was busy counting china.

“My service for twelve has dwindled to eight,”

8 / Mary Daheim

she said, more to herself than to her mother, who was still wrestling with Sweetums and the walker. “I wonder if the fortune-teller knows where to find odd lots of Wedgwood’s Pembroke pattern?”

“Odd lots is right,” her mother snorted as the war with Sweetums wound down to its inevitable conclusion. After Gertrude whacked the walker against the wall, an ear-shattering screech ensued. Sweetums abandoned the field and fled into the dining room, leaving behind a trail of fur. “Lots of odd ones in that Brodie family,” remarked Gertrude, panting a little. “I’d search ’em before they left come Saturday noon.”

Disinclined to argue, Judith looked at the art deco calendar on the refrigerator. It was Thursday; Saturday suddenly seemed far away. The house would be empty tonight, tomorrow would be taken up with grocery shopping and fixing the impromptu dinner. Judith’s logical mind toted up the price tag to feed the brood of Brodies, plus a fortune-teller for dessert: A rib roast for eight would probably cost over fifty dollars, plus potatoes, vegetables, bread, and condi-ments. Maybe they’d expect liquor, too. It was possible that the impulsive figure she’d given Oriana was going to backfire.

Especially with the cream puffs.

“What’s the matter?” demanded Gertrude, seeing her daughter’s worried expression. “Screw yourself again?”

Judith uttered a truncated laugh. “Well, nobody else has offered.”

“Watch your mouth,” snapped Gertrude, leaning on the walker and getting to her feet. “What kind of a girl have I raised?” With a show of indignation, she clumped out of the kitchen toward the back stairs. “Besides, if you’re talking about romance,” she rasped over her shoulder, “there’s always that damned cat.”

TWO

JUDITH HAD TO give the Brodie family their due: They arrived promptly though almost simultaneously at six-thirty p.m.

Friday night, sporting luggage with various designer labels, the rain blowing in behind them. Judith’s regular cleaning woman-cum-laundress, Phyliss Rackley, had called in sick.

But a last-minute crisis had been averted when, as if in answer to a prayer, good old Cousin Renie had phoned not two minutes later, announcing that she had made the deadline for her annual report design, her husband had gone to a creative dream seminar for the weekend, the kids were away, and she was going to put her feet up and watch
Brides-head
Revisited
on video, eat microwave popcorn, and drink six gallons of Pepsi. Judith demolished her cousin’s own creative dream in ten seconds by asking her to fill in for Phyliss.

“Who are all these goofy people?” Renie demanded when she peeked out through the swinging kitchen door into the dining room between tosses of romaine lettuce.

Judith explained even as she tested the rib roast and 9

10 / Mary Daheim

started the gravy. “Otto Brodie lives over on the Bluff, in that big old stone house with the topiary animal shrubs. He made his fortune in bombs during World War II, and then cleaned up—so to speak—with carpet sweepers. He’s retired now, and that’s his second wife, Oriana, who”—she paused long enough to grab the peppermill, grind it too fast, and sneeze—“was once an opera singer of some renown if little talent. Otto’s two kids—if that’s how to describe the Hulk and the Bulk—are Lancelot and Guinevere, his first wife, Minnie, being into King Arthur.”

“Aha! The house with the blue baggie over it. Fumigating, which is why they’re here, instead of there.” Renie diced the tomatoes with verve. “Lance played pro football and Gwen writes dirty books, right?” She saw Judith nod from behind her Kleenex. “Don’t blow your nose in the gravy, coz, it looks bad in the tour books. Gwen’s been married about ten times and Lance’s wife does something on TV. If I ever watched anything but PBS and sports, I’d know what it was.

Lance I remember. He played wide receiver for the old Hollywood Stars and retired early with a bum knee or something.

Out-of-Bounds Brodie, he was called, because he always ran for the sidelines.”

“No wonder the Stars went kaput,” commented Judith, smoothing out the lumps in the gravy with a wooden spoon.

“Mrs. Out-of-Bounds, otherwise known as Mavis Lean-Brodie, is the anchor for KINE but is on vacation this week.”

“That accounts for the brittle but sincere façade,” said Renie, examining a cucumber. “I knew I’d seen her, but I thought she was the demo lady at Falstaff’s Market.”

Judith ignored her cousin’s ignorance of the local media.

“The little weasel is Otto’s nephew, and he may look like an idiot but he’s actually Harvey Carver, a big-shot surgeon at Norway General. His wife is the original Mrs. Do-Good, can’t think of her first name, Nellie or Tilly or something like that. Check your PBS donation list.”

“I did. They misspelled our name. How the hell can
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you screw up Jones? Bill says it was a subconscious effort to fulfill his need for anonymous charity.”

“Bill is full of crap,” said Judith, though not without affection. “I’d like to see him psychoanalyze this crew. I don’t know why, but they make me nervous. I should have wallpapered instead.”

Renie leaned against the door, taking another peek at the assembled guests who had, to Judith’s immense relief, brought their own liquor supply. Indeed, Otto appeared to be well on his way to what Oriana had delicately referred to as “unruly.” Lance looked vaguely cross-eyed, or perhaps merely vague. Mavis was regarding her husband with bene-volent disapproval, while Gwen twittered at her cousin Harvey in a voice that could only be described as jarring.

“Who’s the dark-haired guy in the cheap suit?” Renie whispered, letting the door close discreetly.

“That’s a very expensive suit, made cheap only by the wearer, whose arrival, I must say, certainly disconcerted both Mrs. Brodies and Mrs. Carver,” replied Judith, leaving the gravy long enough to test the potatoes. “I take it they had not met him before and were expecting someone—or something—else. The ascot’s a bit much, as is his name, Felix

‘Dash’ Subarosa, and he’s Guinevere’s current whatever.

They’re, er, engaged.”

“Really.” Renie exchanged raised eyebrows with Judith.

“Cute. Are they ready for the salad, or shall we turn them out in the back yard so they can graze?”

“Mother’s already out there setting the cat on fire.” She poured some of the potato water into the gravy and stirred like mad. “Actually, Mother is over at the Rankers’s for the evening. They’re watching old Nazi movies. You know how worked up Mother gets over Goebbels.”

“My mother still thinks his first name was George. Do the Rankers still fight like heavyweight champs?”

Judith scraped the sides of the of the gravy pan. “Not since the kids moved out. They haven’t had a TKO since both of them threw Carl Jr. out the upstairs window.” She sampled the gravy and nodded. “Not bad, just a bit thin.”

12 / Mary Daheim

“I think the Rankers are fun,” said Renie, giving the lettuce one last toss, “not to mention good-hearted. Okay, let’s do the honors with the salad. Whatever happened to the rest of your Wedgwood? You’re down to eight in just about everything except the dessert plates.”

“Dan used to throw them at me,” Judith replied without rancor. “Except for the soup tureen, which he threw at the TV set, missed, and sent through our picture window in the house on Thurlow Street.”

“I always told you it was a rotten neighborhood,” said Renie, as Judith began bearing salad plates out of the kitchen.

“I’m so glad you’re back on Heraldsgate Hill. You’ve got to admit it’s a lot more peaceful up here.”

“So far,” Judith noted dryly, and wondered why the words stuck in her throat. Shrugging off the uncharacteristic sense of doom, she stepped into the dining room and immediately felt the old house wrap its arms around her.

Oak, darkened by age and numerous applications of var-nish, lent the first floor of the house a sense of dignity. A small bay window curved out at one end of the room, though its view was limited to the Rankers’s living room, where the drapes were now tightly drawn. An authentic Venetian chandelier hung from the ceiling over the oval table, and a breakfront crammed with four generations of bric-a-brac took up most of the wall opposite the kitchen door. The room opened up into the large living room at one end, and another, smaller door led into the entry hall, which housed a former coat closet converted by Judith into a half bath. A red azalea sat in the middle of the table, and two cyclamen plants, one white, one pink, reposed at either end of an oak and marble washstand that Judith used for bar service. The table linen was from Ireland, the crystal from Italy, the sterling an English heirloom from Grandmother Grover. As always, Judith felt a sudden rush of pride at her creation. All those risks she’d taken might still pay off. The old house had required a lot of work and it needed even more, yet she had managed by dint of a bank loan and her own labor to turn Hillside Manor into

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a cozy retreat. Indeed, it was more than that, though Judith herself could not have identified the intangible quality of hospitality that was due not so much to creature comforts as to her own innate knack with people.

“Feast time,” she announced breezily, setting the salads down at each place. “It’s a real treat for me to host a sitdown dinner for a change, especially for hometown folks.” The lie was glib, the smile convincing. “Rolls coming up. Here,” she urged, tapping the back of the Jacobean chair at the head of the table, “Mr. Brodie, this is your place, with your daughter-in-law on your right and Mrs. Carver on your left. Mrs.

Brodie, you have the honor of sitting at the other end of the table, then Dr. Carver and your stepson, and we’ll put Mrs., uh, er”—she faltered, not immediately recalling Guinevere’s present married name—“Tweeks in the middle on this side, and Mr. Subarosa directly across, between Mrs. Lean-Brodie and the doctor. All right?”

It seemed all right to Mavis, Dr. and Mrs. Carver, Guinevere, Oriana, and even Dash, who, Judith noted, was not wearing socks despite the chilly January weather. Lance, however, looked uncertain until he got his cue from Mavis.

As for Otto, he was staunchly clinging to a bottle of scotch and grinning lewdly at his hostess. Judith thought his hazel eyes weren’t as unfocused as they should be, considering his apparent state of semi-stupor.

“Hey, I’ll take my seat, but I’d rather have yours!” he chuckled, making a pass at Judith’s backside with his free hand. “How about sitting on my lap? Isn’t true you’re the hostess with the mostes’?”