Sticks & Scones Page 16

  Hey, Officer Schultz, he wrote on January 20, I really appreciate you letting me write to you. Look, all I want is to get enough money to pay my dad back for his truck. I don’t want him to die with my stealing hanging over my head. And I don’t want to go to prison. I didn’t want anybody to die. I didn’t kill the FedEx driver. So you can tell the D.A. that, too. Ray whacked him.

  Where’s Ray Wolff? Where are the stamps? You don’t want much, do you? Day after tomorrow, Ray will be casing places to store the stamps. When you think Storage in Furman County, what do you think of?

  His next communication was equally defensive, written in the same flip, bravado tone. Tom, man, are you trying to get me into more trouble? You got Ray Wolff, you got THE GUY who whacked the driver, why can’t I come in now and collect the reward? My dad’s not going to live much longer. Now you’re telling me I can’t get out of the theft and complicity charges without rolling over on my partner and telling you where the loot is? Come on, Tom, give me a break.

  The third and final letter was his farewell. Tom, I’ve got a stake, and a chance to make big money to pay my dad back. Why do you keep asking me the same questions? No, I can’t turn in our other partner. No, I can’t tell you where the stuff is, or how we’re going to sell it. It’s getting hard writing you, I’m being watched all the time. I think my partner suspects I turned Ray in. But I had my reasons. I’ll call you from Atlantic City. If I can.

  Well, there was one question answered, at least for me: our other partner. One person. Probably our shooter.

  And as to Andy’s movements? He had called me from Central City, not Atlantic City. Then he’d disappeared, and turned up dead in Aspen Meadow. Unless Pete Balachek was incoherent from his illness, the police would have questioned him about his son and his associates. I didn’t have a clue as to who the “partner” was. Nor did I have the slightest idea where the stolen stamps were. So what was my next move?

  One thing was sure: I wanted to visit with Sara Beth O’Malley She might or might not be expecting Tom to meet her at the dentist’s the day after tomorrow. But I had a very easy way of finding out if she was telling the truth on that score. I knew where the endodontist’s office was. Oh, the glories of living in a small town.

  CHAPTER 16

  While my disk coughed up recipes and menus for Tudor feasts, my mind traveled back to the fight between Michaela and Eliot. The figures on the screen swam. At a Saint John’s Day feast five years before the death of Henry VIII, the offerings included venison pies. …

  Was I overreacting, or had that courtyard conflict struck a bit too close for comfort? If Eliot was physically explosive with his female staff, did I even want to consider a long-term job for him? I frowned and tried to think. My screen dimmed. I wanted to report their skirmish to the cops. But Tom had told me to stay out of it, and that’s what I would do. For now.

  I tapped a button; the screen brightened. In addition to consuming venison pies, the folks at Hampton Court had enjoyed a Saint John’s Day first course of beef in vinegar sauce, carp baked with wine and prunes, bread, butter, and eggs. For the second course, the courtiers had dug into boiled mutton, swan, peacocks, roast boar with pudding, wafers, and marzipan. Ah yes: The high-protein, high-fat, high-sugar diet. No wonder their teeth had fallen out.

  I browsed forward to 1588, when an Elizabethan feast had included joints of venison roasted in rye, sides of beef, boars’ heads; bacon, calves’ feet, game pies with cinnamon; peacock, herons, blackbirds, larks; salmon, eels, turbot, whiting, sprats, oysters; sweetmeats, syrups, jellies, candied roses and violets, grapes, oranges, almonds, hazelnuts; cakes and syrup-soaked confections.

  Well. Eliot and I had already agreed that calves’ feet and spicy elk pie wouldn’t go over big with the youthful fencing team. Not to mention that any plan to serve herons and larks would ensure wrathful demonstrations from every environmental group in Aspen Meadow.

  So we’d come up with compromises. “Sides of beef” had metamorphosed into veal roasts, already ordered from my supplier. Current seafood prices precluded offering oysters, salmon, or turbot, and I’d told Eliot the kids wouldn’t touch eels. I’d been delighted to tell him, though, that a recipe from Roman Britain had included prawns. There was the Roman Empire, and then there was the British Empire, which had included India. So we had decided on a shrimp curry. That had left only dessert. In the end, we’d agreed the fencers would enjoy a real Elizabethan plum tart. And then Eliot had decided on tucking in the zirconia. Sara Beth might not be the only client for the dentist.

  All this had left one uncharted territory: Side Dishes. Americans would not eat a meal composed only of meat and sugar. I clicked on a file marked Potatoes, Corn, and Tomatoes, all exotic European imports in Elizabeth’s time. Sir Walter Raleigh, according to one source, had brought back potatoes from Virginia, and raised them on his estate in Ireland. Eliot had told me to be creative, so I would test-drive a potato concoction that night. If everyone liked it, I would serve it to the fencers and their families.

  I closed down the computer, dressed, and knocked softly on Julian’s door. After squinting at the carved wood, I extracted a note wedged between the frame and the brass doorknob. Am doing 50 laps of crawl in the indoor pool. Meet you in the kitchen at 8.

  My shoulders hurt just thinking about fifty laps of anything.

  It was quarter to eight. I snagged an extra cardigan in case someone had left the kitchen window open again, quietly closed our door, and reminded myself to act grateful toward our hosts, regardless of the argument I’d witnessed. I would find out what was going on between Eliot and Michaela one way or another. Meanwhile, we had a meal to fix. My banged-up body ached with each step down to the kitchen. So I focused resolutely on the breakfast Julian and I could whip up. Ricotta-stuffed pancakes. Poached eggs smothered in steamed baby vegetables. One of the joys of the first meal of the day is that it can melt away most pain.

  When I banged into the kitchen, I saw Sukie first. Bent over the double sink, she was wearing rubber gloves and viciously scrubbing a suds-filled coffeepot. Behind her, the errant window was closed. Michaela and Eliot sat at the kitchen table, sullenly eyeing a plate of frosty prepackaged strudel. Beside the pastry lay a dozen boxes overflowing with fabric swatches and paint chips.

  Uh-oh, I thought, too late.

  Standing by the hearth with her arms crossed, Chardé Lauderdale gasped when she spotted me. She wore a dark green pantsuit with a fur collar that set off her pretty features. Two red spots flamed on her cheeks. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting to see me. Or was she? I held my chin high and gave her an even look.

  Buddy Lauderdale, standing by one of the windows overlooking the moat, turned slowly to face me. He touched the lapels of his camel’s-hair coat, narrowed his glassy eyes, then straightened his swarthy face into a passive, self-consciously blank expression. Next to his father, sixteen-year-old Howie Lauderdale shifted his feet. Howie wore de rigueur shabby-chic khaki shirt and pants, along with his fencing jacket. He was short for his age, with a chubby, angelic face, dark curly hair, and a smile I had always found endearing, especially when he encouraged Arch with his fencing. How such a great kid could have been produced by Buddy Lauderdale was beyond me. Then again, I hadn’t known the ex-wife Buddy had dumped to marry the lovely Chardé. Probably she’d been a great mother.

  “Hi, Goldy,” said Howie in a low voice. He colored when his father touched his arm.

  “I am very sorry to hear you’ve moved yourself in here,” Chardé spat in my direction.

  “Now, Chardé,” Eliot began soothingly. Today he wore tweed pants and a smoking jacket. Did the man even own a pair of jeans? He said, “You and Buddy and Goldy have merely had an unfortunate misunderstanding. Howie, chap, come on over here and help me figure out how to defrost this thing in the microwave.”

  Chardé snorted; Buddy crossed his arms and didn’t budge. Michaela set her lips in a scowl. Howie and Eliot busied themselves with the microwave while Sukie ran the fau
cet full blast to rinse out the coffeepot. When the microwave beeped and Eliot pulled out the strudel, poor Howie looked from one adult to another, probably hoping someone would somehow break the tension.

  “Uh,” Howie said to me, his face crimson, “Arch is doing real well with the foil. The whole team is amazed at how he’s come along.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. Since no one had told me what they were doing in the kitchen at this hour, I ventured, “Do you all have an early practice today?”

  “No, no,” Howie replied, as Eliot handed him a piece of pastry that looked like iced cardboard. “I was just working with Michaela in her loft. My dad and Chardé wanted to watch. We’re going to school as soon as Chardé leaves her stuff … and then I guess we’ll see you, uh—”

  Sukie finished drying the coffeepot and wiped her hands on her apron. “Buddy, Chardé, Howie,” she murmured. “Goldy and her family and her friend are staying with us through the fencing banquet.”

  “That’s a mistake,” Chardé announced. I turned away and searched in the Hydes’ refrigerator for unsalted butter and eggs. When I headed for the mixer, Chardé cocked her head at Eliot. “I hope she’s paying you rent, Eliot.”

  Michaela interrupted to say it was time for her to leave. After she clomped out, Eliot slumped at the kitchen table, looking as chilled as the strudel. I pulled a loaf pan out of a cupboard and glanced at Buddy, who was stroking his dimpled chin and frowning. Should I ask him where little Patty was? With a nanny? Better off with a babysitter than with her parents, right? I rummaged in the cupboards and pulled out two types of dried fruit: pineapple and sour cherries. I found a cutting board and a knife, and placed everything on the kitchen table across from Eliot. Just concentrate on the cooking.

  Buddy Lauderdale sauntered forward and pulled a fat catalog out from under the mountain of paint chips. With annoying deliberateness, he laid it on top of the cutting board. Then he asked in that oily voice I knew only too well, “Ever heard of Marvin, Goldy? They make windows.”

  Taken aback, I stared at the catalog jacket for Marvin Windows, casements and bays floating against a background of blue sky.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. Lauderdale?” I managed to say. “Or would you rather tell my husband, upstairs?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Buddy, as he tapped his cheek in mock thoughtfulness, “how is your husband?”

  I turned to Sukie, who was standing in front of the microwave cabinet. “I need to make a call. Someplace private.”

  “Don’t you dare call the police again,” Chardé Lauderdale shrieked at me as she began gathering up her swatches and chips. She stopped only long enough to stab a scarlet-painted nail in my direction. “I am a good person. I don’t want you to get in my way anymore. I don’t want to run into you at Elk Park Prep, I don’t want to run into you here, I don’t want to see you at the luncheon tomorrow. You stay out of our lives, do you understand?”

  “Please, people—” Eliot faltered. He had a pained expression on his face, like a king whose courtiers’ conflicts were giving him a headache.

  “I’m going to Elk Park Prep today, I’m staying here, and I’ll be catering the lunch tomorrow,” I informed Chardé, getting angry myself. “So if you don’t want to run into me, you’d better stay home. Oh, and that includes the banquet Friday night, too.”

  Sukie hustled over to Buddy, Howie, and Chardé, helped scoop up the paint chips and catalogs, and murmured about coming another time to work on the new color schemes. Howie muttered that he needed to get to school, and Eliot announced that Buddy should take a look at his car. When they all left, I didn’t offer any goodbyes.

  Instead, I returned to the sweet bread I intended to make for breakfast. The combination of dried pineapple and cherries would make a not-too-sweet-or-too-tart, gloriously colorful loaf. I closed my eyes and imagined holding a bread slice up to the light.

  Don’t think about the Lauderdales, just cook.

  I chopped the fragrant dried fruits, set them to soak, and revved up the mixer. The beaters whipped through the butter and sugar until it resembled spun gold. By the time I was adding flour, leavening, and orange juice, I had a name for the concoction: Stained-Glass Sweet Bread.

  Stained-Glass Sweet Bread

  1½ cups dried tart cherries

  ½ cup chopped dried pineapple

  4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened

  1½ cups sugar

  2 eggs

  4 cups all-purpose flour (High altitude: add 2 tablespoons)

  4 teaspoons baking powder (High altitude: 1 tablespoon)

  ½ teaspoon baking soda

  2 teaspoons salt

  1½ cups orange juice

  Place the cherries and chopped pineapple in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand 15 minutes, then drain and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside.

  Butter and flour two 8½ × 4½-inch loaf pans. Set aside.

  Cream the butter with the sugar until well blended. (Mixture will look like wet sand.) Add the eggs and beat well. Sift the dry ingredients together twice. Add the flour mixture alternately to the creamed mixture with the orange juice, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stir in the fruits, blending well. Divide evenly between the pans. Allow to stand for 20 minutes.

  While the mixture is standing, preheat the oven to 350°F.

  Bake the breads for 45 to 55 minutes, until toothpicks inserted in the loaves come out clean. Cool in the pans 10 minutes, then allow to cool completely on racks.

  Makes 2 loaves

  “Dear Goldy, I am so sorry about the Lauderdales,” Eliot announced in his kingly, regretful voice, as he swung through the door from the dining room. “Everything to them is a drama, and I do get tired of being their audience. We were at their New Year’s Eve party, but did not see the conflict that so upset everyone.” I stifled a response: No one saw it except for me. That’s the problem. Meanwhile, Eliot turned his attention to the mixer bowl. “Let’s chat about something more pleasant. Historic menus.”

  I nodded an assent, finished scooping the thick batter into the prepared pan, and decided to let it rise a while to lighten the texture.

  “May I use the phone first?” I asked him. “I need to make a couple of important calls. I’d like to do it where I won’t be interrupted.”

  He wrinkled his brow, a sure sign of mental wheels whizzing. Is my caterer spreading more bad publicity for my castle? “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, with effort. “My office is more private.”

  I set the timer, glanced at my watch, grabbed my extra sweater, and followed him out. We ran into Julian in the hallway. His brown hair was wet from his postswim shower, and he looked dapper in black chef pants and a white shirt. I begged him to preheat the oven, and put in the bread. He said he’d love to, then whistled cheerfully as he banged into the kitchen.

  “Damn!” he yelled as the door swung closed. “It’s cold in here! Who opened that window again?”

  “Eliot?” I asked as he held open a door that led through the courtyard. “If you’ve got a loose catch on a window, why don’t you have it fixed?”

  Eliot’s voice was rueful. “It’s original glass.”

  Outside, a bitter wind smacked our faces. I pulled on my sweater and reflected that if I’d made millions selling some old letter, I’d get a new kitchen window, no matter what anyone told me about preservation. I gasped at the cold and caught the word “shortcut,” as a cloud of steam issued from Eliot’s mouth. I struggled to match his long strides as we trotted along an ice-edged brick pathway through the Tudor garden. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk teetered on the wind. Below, the snow-dusted, duncolored plant stalks rattled and swayed.

  “Even with all the money we made from the sale of our famous letter,” Eliot called back to me, as if reading my mind, “we did not have sufficient funds to redo the entire castle. You see the north half of the east range?” I hugged myself, turned, and looked back obediently. “We did the first floor where the dini
ng room and kitchen are. Above that, it’s all closed off.” He pointed to the window that Marla had banged on when she’d yelled at him. “That’s the south side of the east range,” Eliot continued. My eyes swept over the rapiers on the arch supports. “There, where you’re staying in the guest suites, we redid the upper story. On the south range—” He pointed to his right, to the wall with the postern gate “—we did restore both stories.”

  Okay, okay, my mind screamed. I don’t need background on the refurbishing effort when I’m freezing to death!

  “The Great Hall on the east side of the south range is on the second floor,” Eliot blithely persisted, “while four conference rooms are below it. On the west side of the postern gate,” his hand arched to the right, “there are the swimming pool and locker rooms on the lower level, and conference rooms above. My study is in the west range”—he gestured farther to the right, directly across the courtyard from the kitchen—“where we’ve only redone half of the lower story. Further down the hall from my study is Sukie’s and my room.”

  “And Michaela?” I couldn’t help asking. “Where does she live?”

  He gave me a sharp look, then pointed back to the gatehouse. “She occupies the western section of the north range, including the gatehouse. According to my grandfather’s will, Vladimir Kirovsky’s descendants may stay there as long as their family remain the castle caretakers. Sukie and I intend to hire a whole staff of caretakers, of course, as soon as the conversion to a conference center is complete.” He exhaled without saying where all those worker-bees were slated to reside. “And you’ve already seen our lovely living room, decorated by Chardé, who does have talent, even if she’s a tad rough around the edges.”