While Tom and Zack banged and hammered on the first Boor, I took a long shower, wrapped myself in a thick terry-cloth robe, and settled down in our bedroom. First I called Lutheran Hospital, where the E.M.S. said they were taking Leah. No one at the hospital could give me any information yet, unfortunately. Next, I pulled out the packet Leah had given me. The disheveled pages of Andre's menus and bills to Ian's Images were meticulously numbered and dated but out of order. I put them in order and opened my calendar. I needed to reconstruct what Andr‚ had told me about his meal-service plans, and how those had been disrupted by Ian's breaking the window with the temper tantrum that had also cost him a camera and a whole lot of glass.
The first day I had worked with Andr‚ had been Monday, the eighteenth of August. I smoothed out the menu for that day and felt a twinge when I read Models' Mushroom Soup and Goldy's Vegetarian Dish - the Florentine cheesecakes. I traced the letters with my fingers, admiring Andr‚'s faithfully kept resolution to write as well as speak English. Burnt Sugar Cake. He'd given me careful instructions on not burning myself. I steered away from that particular irony while noting that beside the lunch menu for Tuesday, a different hand had written: Andr‚: Could you please serve lunch inside for the next days? We'll be working on the deck and need the space. L. Leah. That day, he had proceeded with Vichyssoise, Chilled Stuffed Artichokes, Marinated Beef Salad, Brioche, Fresh Fruit Skewers, and Grand Marnier Buttercream Cookies.
On Wednesday the twentieth, he'd done a coffee break that consisted of Scallion Frittata, Freshfruit Pineapple Boats, and Scones with Lemon Curd. Wednesday's lunch had featured Cream of Corn Soup, Lump Crab Salad, Green Beans Vinaigrette, Dill Rolls, and Chocolate Cake. On Thursday he'd treated the assembly to Spiral-cut Ham, Fruit Plate, and Pecan Rolls for the coffee break, while: lunch had been an offering of Western-style Barbecue Ribs, Coleslaw, Potato Salad, Corn on the Cob, and Brownies.
American cooking? Incredible. Friday we had catered together at the Homestead Museum, heard Sylvia's sad tale of her violated museum, seen the children model. And he'd had his rniniattack.
He'd died before serving the Monday coffee break.
He'd written the prep plans, though: CrŠme Br–l‚e Cups for 20 - start Saturday. To that he'd added Peach Compote - make Sunday. Heavy on the cholesterol and sugar, but that was the French way.
His bills had been uncomplicated: figuring ten to twenty people per day, service, tax, and gratuity included: ten dollars a pop for the coffee break, eighteen for the lunch. He'd averaged a daily gross of about seven hundred dollars. On Friday afternoon, he had written down the check number of the payment Leah had made to him for the first week's work. I did not know whether he had ever deposited the check. I sighed and closed the notebook. Downstairs, the loud pow of Tom's nail gun split the air.
I would be seeing Pru Hibbard the following afternoon, at the memorial service. It would not be tactful to pose any questions about Andr‚'s week with the fashion folks. The last thing a bereaved widow needed was to imagine there was anything unusual about her husband's death. Which, of course, there was.
Slowly, I read back over the menus. I visualized Andr‚ working on Sunday, peeling peaches for the compote he would serve on Monday morning for Ian's Images. First, he would have placed the thickly sliced peaches in a baking dish, then reamed out a lemon for its juice, mixed the juice with some red wine, sugar, a cinnamon stick, and some cloves and a bit of salt. This he would have heated and poured over the glistening peaches before placing them in the oven. Then, for the other dish... Wait a minute.
I closed my eyes and remembered Andre bustling about to prepare crŠme br–l‚e. He'd insisted on teaching me his old-fashioned way, although I'd ended up developing my own method. Andr‚ would stir and heat eggs with cream to a rich custard, then chill the dish over-night, which is why he would have started it on Saturday. Then on Sunday he would have covered it with a thin-layer of light brown sugar, and... Hold on.
To caramelize the sugar, he did not use a hand-held propane torch, as I did. No: Andr‚ used his own salamander, an old-fashioned iron tool heated over a fire and then run over the top of the crŠme, to make it br–l‚e. Like his butter-baller, his balloon whisks, and battered wooden spoons, Andr‚'s salamander came from the time before modern kitchen equipment was common. It was a curved, fancy implement that I'd seen many times in his red metal toolbox.
In my mind's eye I saw Andr‚'s dead body, his burned hands. CrŠme br–l‚e crusted by the heat of a salamander. Strangely shaped burns carved into the skin followed by death... or something like that. In any event, because of the shape of the burns, I knew the salamander must have caused the scars. How had it happened? When could the burning have happened? Not. Sunday when he'd originally made the custards, or he would have put salve on them, wouldn't he? Or bandages? He'd told the cabdriver he'd finished making the food... but he had to be at the cabin early for prep. Why? Could there have been some reason why he'd felt he had to make more custards Monday morning? What would that reason be? Could someone have startled him while he was cooking, as Rustine had startled me today, so that he burned himself, had chest pains, and took an overdose of nitroglycerin? If someone had surprised him, why wouldn't that person have called for help when Andr‚ collapsed, as Boyd had called for help today?
It still didn't make sense. But at least I knew one thing. Andr‚ had been burned by his own salamander.
I checked my watch: just before five. I put in a quick call to the morgue, and was astonished to be put straight through to Sheila O'Connor.
"Sheila, it's Goldy... look, I just didn't know who else to call - "
"No problem."
"Remember those marks on Andr‚'s hands?" When she mm-hmmed, I took a deep breath. "I know what caused them." I told her about the menus, the crŠme br–l‚e, and the salamander.
"So, what are you telling me?" she asked patiently. "That he was burned while he was cooking? I never thought anything else."
What was I telling her, exactly? "Of course he was burned while he was cooking, but it just doesn't add up. Why would he tell the cabdriver he was all done, and then proceed to make more food? If one of the photo people came to the cabin and told Andr‚ extra people were showing up, and then Andr‚ burned himself and collapsed, why didn't the photo person call for help?"
Sheila took a deep breath. "Goldy, you loved your teacher. I know you did. I know you hate to think of him as old and vulnerable. But he was. Our guys found his empty bottle of nitroglycerin, by the way. His doctor says the bottle should have been full."
"He took a whole bottle? When he was sensitive to it? Why would he do that? How much was in his system?"
"About two hundred milligrams. It's a lethal dose. Goldy - "
"Did he have any... internal bruising that would have shown someone forcing pills down his throat?"
"You're always telling me about Med Wives one-oh-one, Goldy. Remember? Nitroglycerin dissolves in the mouth."
"Do you have any evidence that might indicate this wasn't an accidental overdose? Please, Sheila, he was my teacher."
"Have Tom call me tomorrow." Then she clicked off.
Sometimes problems, like a well-simmered stock, must be put on the back burner. I couldn't obsess about Andr‚'s death any more that day. Nor could I contemplate how long it would be until my kitchen was back in service. Nor did I even want to think about being replaced as the caterer for Weezie Harrington's birthday party, or of my replacement, Craig Litchfield, wowing the country club divorc‚e set.
Instead, I forced myself to shove all that aside, and relaxed into our lovely dinner on the deck. If the pizza was a bit cool, the calzones a tad mushy, no one mentioned it. Arch raptly contemplated the sun slipping behind burnished copper clouds. The only thing he told us about his day was that he and Julian had been invited to Rustine and Lettie's house the next afternoon for lunch. Tom, exhausted from his carpentry labors, fell asleep on a deck chair before Julian could proffer take-out tiramisu. I gently woke him and tugged him up to bed. Julian, bless his heart, offered to clean up. He said he was actually starting to like washing dishes in the tub.
The next morning, Tom was once again up early and hammering away as I pulled myself out of bed and stretched through my yoga. Julian and Arch were sleeping in. We had no catering jobs, although Julian had vowed to experiment with something to take to Rustine's. Maybe he didn't dislike her quite as much as he pretended.
When I came into the kitchen, Tom appeared to be about a third of the way through nailing in the lower cabinets. Unfortunately, huge piles of boxes obscured my ability to admire all of his work.
"What do you think?" he asked happily. He wore a sweatshirt and jeans, a carpenter's apron, and two days' worth of beard.
I smiled. "I love it." No matter what I thought, I had learned over the last few days to say his work was fantastic.
"You'll have to get your coffee in town, I'm afraid," he told me. "I had to shut off the water, just for the morning. And Marla called. She's almost done with the IRS and wants to meet you at St. Stephen's at three-thirty, before the service."
Relief swept over me. My friend was finally going to be released from audit agony! "That's super." I located the phone and called Lutheran Hospital. Leah Smythe, I was finally told by a nurse I knew, had two broken ribs and lacerations on her face, arms, and legs. The doctor was in seeing her, but the nurse would relay the message that I'd called. And could she find out about Barbara Burr, I asked. I was put on hold, then told sadly that Barbara's condition hadn't changed. Next I called Pru Hibbard; the line was busy. I put nightmares of bottom-feeding Realtors out of my head, and hoped the engaged line meant other people were making sympathy calls to Andr‚'s widow.
Tom eyed me skeptically. "You seem awfully perky for a caterer with no kitchen, no water, and a tenuous business. You must want something wicked bad."
"Actually, I need you to call the morgue."
"Oh. Is that all?"
"Tom, listen. Just ask Sheila if there's any possible evidence to show that Andre's nitroglycerin overdose wasn't an accident."
Tom put down his nail gun and came over to give me a hug. "Miss G., I know you loved him. But you're going to have to let it go."
"If I'd been there helping him, he wouldn't have died."
"For crying out loud, Goldy, you know how many lives I could have saved if I just would have been someplace at the right time?"
"Please, Tom, I'll let it go just as soon as I know how and why he died." I reached for my van keys.
"Now where are you going?"
"Into town for coffee," I replied innocently.
"You've got that purposeful look about you that's not just desperation for caffeine."
Ah, how well the man knew me. "No bail was set for Cameron Burr, right? Because it's a murder case."
"Correct."
"So the next event in Cameron's life is his preliminary hearing?"
"Ye-es."
"I need to go visit him at the jail. To talk to him about another outlaw."
One of the marvelous additions to Aspen Meadow in the last year was one of those drive-through espresso places where you order, answer a trivia question, get a card punched, and layout in cash the cost of an entire fast-food breakfast for a triple-shot latte. Still, a treat was a treat, I thought as I sipped the luscious, caffeine-rich drink and zoomed down to the Furman County Jail.
Visiting hours during the week were from nine to eleven in the morning and one to three in the afternoon. I arrived just after nine and still had half of my expensive coffee to savor. So I put the cup on the dash, got out pen and paper, and started to scribble the questions I needed to pose to Cameron Burr, president of the historical society, the one person in Aspen Meadow who might know enough to figure out the puzzle of Charlie Smythe. Unwritten, but first on the list, was: Would Cameron, who had not answered any of my phone calls, see me?
Hunched over my paper, my heart quickened unexpectedly when someone passed by the back of my van. I did not move, only looked up at the rearview mirror and followed the movement. The dark-haired man was smoking, walking fast. Usually visitors to the jail at this hour were attorneys. Occasionally, out-of-work family members would straggle in. The man glanced over his shoulder to determine if I was watching him. Catching my eye in the mirror, he flicked his cigarette onto the grass and sprinted to the Upscale Appetite van. A moment later, he revved his vehicle and took off in a nimbus of grit and dust.
Well, now, there was a question I wouldn't have thought to write down.
Who at the sheriffs department - or in the jail - had just received an early-morning visit from Craig Litchfield?
20
The desk officer, a fresh-faced fellow named Sergeant Riordan, was not someone I knew. I handed my driver's license over the counter and announced my desire to visit Cameron Burr. Riordan nodded and cheerfully tapped an unseen keyboard.
