Killer Pancake gbcm-5 Page 5

  Inside the club, rock music still throbbed against the black walls. People were gathering, expecting food. After what we’d just gone through, the shock of business as usual felt disorienting. In my absence, Julian had laid out the crudités and dips next to a stack of glass plates, and served up glass bowls of asparagus soup. The buffet line was progressing smoothly; it looked as if about half of the forty women had moved through and were seated. Julian was managing to keep the platters filled and neat as he served, smiled, and answered questions. The women giggled coyly at him, and I could guess at their whispered questions: Isn’t he cute? How long do you suppose he’s been doing this? As we entered, Julian’s eyes darted toward us. I knew we weren’t who he was looking for.

  Tom took the bowl and steamer from my hands. “Just let’s put the food down. Tell him to come outside,” he murmured. “If these folks see me, they might know something’s wrong. I don’t want to start or to deal with a general frenzy.”

  I moved across to the bar. Julian’s face creased in alarm when I asked him to come outside. As we moved toward the door, the women seemed to take no notice of us leaving.

  Outside, Julian immediately demanded, “Where’s Claire?”

  For a moment, neither Tom nor I spoke. Then Tom sighed. He said bluntly, “There’s been a hit-and-run accident. Claire was hit. I’m sorry, Julian, but she’s … she’s dead.”

  Julian clutched Tom’s jacket. He cried, “What? What? What are you telling me? I don’t get it. You’re wrong. You must be wrong.” I felt my throat tighten as I put my arms around him. His hands dropped from Tom’s jacket and his muscled body started to shake. One hand slammed the wall. “Huh?” he cried. “What?” Sweat glistened over his pale skin. His eyes were wild. Shoppers from the mall stopped and stared.

  “Oh, bad sign. He’s going into shock,” Tom told me. “He needs medical attention right away.” As Tom barked into the walkie-talkie that we needed another ambulance, I fumbled to undo the top button of Julian’s shirt so he could breathe more easily. I’d graduated from Med Wives 101 and knew all about shock.

  At that moment the service entrance to the nightclub opened and the woman in yellow poked her head out. Her blond hair looked oily under the fluorescent lights of the hallway, and her thick makeup seemed to add years to her age. Her jet-black eyebrows gave her a menacing aspect, like Tallulah Bankhead on a bad day.

  “What the hell is going on out here?” she demanded in a throaty falsetto. The mall shoppers turned their stare on her. “Where are the exploding bags? Where is Claire Satterfield?”

  Tom Schulz ignored her barrage of questions. “Get back, please, ma’am. Leave us alone.”

  “Oh, gawd … I suppose.” With a huge sigh and bang of the door, she disappeared. Julian slumped against the wall.

  “Takes all kinds,” observed Tom as he lifted one of Julian’s eyelids to check on his state of consciousness.

  Thirty seconds later the door opened again, this time revealing Harriet Wells. We were a long way from our conversation about muffins with okra and how much Mignon would pay for the banquet. Harriet looked with genuine alarm at Julian.

  “Can I help?” she asked us. Her intelligent blue eyes were full of concern. She looked from Tom to me, trying to ascertain who was in charge. “Can you tell me what’s going on? Will we be one server short for the banquet?”

  Julian slumped forward and began to sob. “I’ll be there to serve the food in just a minute,” I snapped as I clutched him. Harriet Wells tilted her head at me skeptically. Clearly, my tear-streaked face and smeared apron did not inspire confidence. Tom once again talked into his radio. The smell of cooking hamburgers from a mall restaurant unexpectedly wafted over us. Julian, Julian, I prayed, pull yourself together. Please.

  “Can you tell me what is going on out here?” Harriet asked.

  My throat closed in panic. I coughed and began to say, “You see, there’s been—”

  Tom put away his radio and interrupted. “We have a crisis. Thanks for your patience. Your caterer will be there momentarily.”

  “I certainly hope so,” was Harriet Wells’s parting comment as she quietly closed the nightclub door.

  Julian’s face was distorted, as if he’d swallowed something and then choked on it. He pulled himself away from me, gasping for breath.

  “Where should we take him?” I asked Tom. “Couldn’t you even tell that woman what happened to Claire?”

  Unexpectedly, Julian reeled in Tom’s direction. Tom snagged him as the group of spectators shrieked.

  “Lower him to the floor,” Tom ordered tersely. “Slowly, very slowly. Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Together, we grasped Julian and helped him down. Before we had him stretched out on the floor, a shaggy-haired policeman rushed up to tell Tom a second ambulance had arrived from the hospital across the street.

  “I’m okay, I’m okay,” gagged a still-shivering Julian. “I want to get up. Don’t make me stay down here.”

  Tom ordered the cop to get a stretcher in. Two more paramedics appeared and lifted Julian, moaning, to a stretcher. As they moved off, I felt suddenly bereft.

  “Where are you going?” I called after them. “When will I hear if he’s okay?”

  Tom was at their heels. “Across the street, Southwest Hospital. Don’t tell anybody what happened. I’ll call you later.” And he was gone.

  The next two hours passed in a fog. I barely noticed the women I served. I found I could block out the day’s events by focusing, focusing, and focusing again on the food, on the job at hand.

  Mercifully, the steamer had stayed closed when I’d heaved it at the angry demonstrator. The bowl of greens was also intact. Without the roast vegetables to garnish and dress the salad, I thinned out the carrot dip with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The resulting dressing was delicious. I had the ridiculous thought that I should have written down how I’d done it. It was such a trivial thing after what had happened to Claire. Hit-and-run. I wondered who would contact her parents in Australia.

  I knew Tom was right, that he could not make a public announcement of Claire’s death to her coworkers at Mignon. Since Julian was the closest American to Claire, Tom was duty-bound to inform him. But Tom had to keep news of the death under wraps in the hope that Claire’s family could be notified by the authorities rather than a journalist in search of a juicy story. The sheriff’s department had a hierarchy of people to notify in the event of sudden death, and they stuck to it. The only folks who managed to screw this up were from the media. One of Arch’s young friends had heard over the radio of his father’s death in a plane crash. The poor child had immediately gone into shock.

  Speaking of which, I couldn’t bear recalling Julian’s disbelieving face and his stricken What? What? I felt his absence by the extra amount of work I had to do: clearing dishes, refilling platters, wiping spills off the granite bar. Sometimes engaging in a load of work heals the heart. In this case, it didn’t.

  The lunch took an eternity. When it was almost over, a slender, elegant woman with long raven-black hair that contrasted with her sleek beige dress and pale orchid corsage got to her feet. Sending a twinkly smile in the direction of the guests, she announced breathlessly that Mignon was going to show slides of the new line of cosmetics for autumn, and then we would have dessert. The spotlights dimmed, and soon we were looking at the luminous, enlarged faces of stunning women. Then we saw the same lovely females with their fingers caressing suggestively shaped plastic bottles. The bottles were filled with stuff you were supposed to put on your face: Magic Pore-closing Toner with Mediterranean Sea Kelp. Extra-rich Alpine Nighttime Replacement Moisturizer with Goat Placenta. Ultragentle Eye Cream Smoother with Swiss Herbs. It sounded like makeup by Heidi. Then we saw the same dramatically made-up women modeling colors of foundation, blush, lipstick, eyeshadow, and mascara. Strawberry Sundae lipstick. Hot Date blush. Foreplay eyeshadow. S’More mascara. The models’ eyes were half closed and their lips were pursed, as if they were tryin
g to kiss the air, or at least seduce it. When it came time for the lipstick, out came the models’ tongues, just touching the tops of their mouths. The message wasn’t exactly subliminal: Buy these cosmetics and you will get sex. When the slides were over and the lights came up, there was so much clapping, you would have thought they’d just announced the Nobel for Makeup.

  I wondered how Julian was doing. I wondered what phase of the investigation the police were in now. Tom had said the state patrol handled traffic, which included hit-and-run. I wondered if the driver who had struck Claire had turned himself in. I tried to imagine where Tom was, what he was dealing with….

  “Okay, girls,” announced the black-haired woman, who had left her table and was standing in front of the slide screen, “that was for you!” She put her hands on her hips and wiggled them provocatively. There was more uproarious clapping. She quieted the group with a restrained Queen Elizabeth-style wave. “We’ve got the best products and the hottest line,” she continued authoritatively. “Everyone is going to be copying us—but we’ve got the jump on them because we’ve got the best sales associates and the best customers!” More thunderous applause. “And you’re going to take us into the future!” From her jacket pocket she whipped out a pair of sunglasses and put them on. This was some kind of cue, because from her table, half a dozen other women quickly donned sunglasses. “So look out, everybody!” she cried. “The future of Mignon Cosmetics is so bright you’re going to have to pull out those shades!” And then there was final, furious clapping from the audience as the black-haired woman strutted back to her seat. Wearing sunglasses, she had a hard time finding it, but someone finally took her hand and guided her back to her spot.

  Out of place. That was what Tom always said he looked for, something out of place. And that was what appeared at exactly that moment: a person who didn’t fit. Someone who was usually a slob. Someone who didn’t wear lipstick or blush or face powder—ever. Someone who, as far as I knew, owned nothing but an ancient, too-large black trench coat and a ratty pair of sneakers held together with duct tape.

  “Frances?” I asked tentatively as I doled out pieces of Nonfat Chocolate Torte to the women in line. “Frances Markasian?”

  She smiled broadly at me and winked, then put her finger to her lips. But I was having none of it

  “Why are you here?” I demanded of Frances Markasian, a reporter from Aspen Meadow’s small weekly newspaper, the Mountain Journal. Had the Mountain Journal even run one article on fashion and makeup? The only piece I remembered seeing was on hunters wearing camouflage blackface when they went looking for elk.

  Frances Markasian arched one freshly plucked eyebrow at the superbly groomed women who surrounded her, and grinned broadly. She patted her dark dreadlocked hair, now pinned into a thick, frizzy bun, then wiggled fingers at the women as they surveyed her. I itched to tell them that Frances Markasian wearing sling-back heels and a spangled St. John’s knit dress was about as rare a sight as a red-tailed fox at a country club tea. But I kept mum.

  As the women wandered back to their tables bearing their plates of Nonfat Chocolate Torte, I hissed, “How could you possibly have heard already?”

  Frances picked at crumbs on the torte plate at the bar. “Heard what?”

  Doggone it. When she finally raised her trying-to-look-innocent black eyes at me, I said evenly, “About the demonstrators. One of them tried to block the door and I whacked him.”

  “You whacked him? With what? A knife or a chocolate torte pan?”

  “A tray of vegetables.”

  The sleek black-haired woman had taken off her sunglasses and was making a concluding announcement. The Mignon luncheon was finally breaking up. I tried to make my tone to Frances conciliatory. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re here? In fact, why don’t you help me pack up my stuff while you’re spilling your guts?”

  “Do you have any real food? I’m still hungry.”

  I sighed. “Peach cobbler or brownies?”

  Before Frances could reply, a short, slightly plump young woman with dyed orange-blond hair cut in a brushed-forward pixie style appeared at the bar. Dusty Routt, unlike journalist Frances Markasian, was not out of place at this perfumed, stylish lunch. Dusty lived just down the street from us in a house built by Aspen Meadow’s branch of the charitable group Habitat for Humanity. For a time she’d gone to prep school with Julian, but had been mysteriously expelled before graduation. She and Julian shared the bond of being scholarship students, and they’d started going out before Dusty was expelled. But a month ago Dusty had made the mistake of introducing Julian to her fellow sales associate in her new job. The fellow sales associate had been Claire Satterfield. Now Dusty’s usually cheery face was mournful and her cornflower-blue eyes pleading.

  “Hi, Goldy,” she said in her singsong voice. “Where’s Julian?”

  “Busy. Dusty, do you know Frances Markasian? Frances works in Aspen Meadow, at the Journal. Frances is a friend of mine,” I said. I did not add sort of a friend. Not a friend I would ever call when I had to confide something. They nodded at each other.

  “You work for Mignon, Dusty?” Frances asked in such an innocent voice that it was clear to me she already knew precisely what Dusty’s job was.

  “Don’t say anything,” I warned Dusty as I covered up the food trays. “Frances thinks she’s the premier investigative reporter in our little burg.”

  The shorn quality of Dusty’s Dreamsicle-colored hair made her look younger than eighteen. In fact, I always thought she resembled a plump Peter Pan. “Wow! I mean, you don’t look like a reporter. You must be successful. I saw that St John’s suit in Lord & Taylor. It looks great on you. Really! Great.”

  Frances shot me a spiteful look and announced she wanted a couple of brownies. Dusty said yes please, she wouldn’t mind a couple herself. I doled the baked goods out, then asked if they could help me get my equipment into the boxes. Thankfully, the nightclub staff was responsible for cleaning the tables and washing the dishes. The cosmetics crowd thinned out. When they’d swiftly polished off their brownies, Frances, in her usual trying-unsuccessfully-to-be-delicate manner, pumped Dusty for information about Mignon’s animal-testing practices as they helped me pack. Dusty shrugged. Frances reflected, frowning, as she rinsed and wrapped the steamer. Then she cleared her throat and asked how security was at Prince & Grogan. Dusty folded up the last box, said she didn’t know much about security, and moved off.

  Frances, disappointed, hoisted up a box and tottered on the sling-back shoes. “Did that girl flunk verbal skills, or what? Do saleswomen talk just about what they sell?” Now it was my turn to feign ignorance. She went on: “I really shouldn’t help you, Goldy, but I need a cigarette. The anti-smoking cops in this mall will throw me in handcuffs if I light up anywhere but in the garage. You blew my cover. I can’t walk in these damn heels. And I’m going to wreck this frigging expensive dress if I carry this box anywhere. A couple of your brownies aren’t worth the aggravation—”

  “Sorry about that, Frances,” I interrupted. “You are such a dear. Not only that, but you’re the only person I know who uses the phrase ‘blew my cover.’ And anyway, I’ll bet you got the paper to pay for your outfit and your lunch. What did you tell the Mignon cosmetics people, that you were from Cosmopolitan?”

  “Vogue.”

  “Fabulous.”

  We lifted our boxes and walked out to the garage. The temperature had risen. Heat seemed to shimmer above the pavement. Three hours had passed since the accident, and everything appeared back to normal. There was no sign of either the demonstrators or the police. In another attempt at nonchalance, Frances glanced furtively in all directions. If she thought I was going to tell her anything about the day’s tragic events, she was very mistaken.

  “How’s married life treating you?” she asked mildly after she’d pushed her box into my van. I noticed someone had inexpertly applied bright red polish to her stubby, much-gnawed fingernails. Part of her cover, no doubt.
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  “Just great,” I told her.

  Frances nodded without interest and unceremoniously unzipped her dress from the collar to the chest and pulled a squashed pack of cigarettes out of her bra. She leaned against the van, lit up, and inhaled greedily, then grinned at me as she blew out smoke rings. I asked, “So how do you cover demonstrators outside a building from inside, when you’re at a banquet? And why were you asking about security? The security guys were all out here.”

  “Oh, they were, were they?”

  “Frances, don’t jive me.”

  “And you, Goldy, are the only one I know who’d use the phrase ‘don’t jive me.’” She drew lavishly on the cigarette. “That department store has a lot of problems,” she said with an arched eyebrow. She blew out smoke, stuck the cigarette back between her lips, and used both hands to rezip her dress. “Or haven’t you heard?” When I shook my head, she shrugged. “I’ve heard some rumors. You know, got to follow everything up, check everything out. Let’s just say I thought the cosmetics place was a good place to start.”

  I decided to ponder that in silence.

  When she’d finished her smoke we walked back to the nightclub, picked up the last batch of boxes, and took them to the van. We chatted about the heat and how we would never in a million years spend the money Mignon was asking for all that night cream, day cream, outside—and inside—and in-between cream. Once the boxes were stacked and secured, I hopped behind the steering wheel, turned on the motor, and thanked Frances again for helping me. As I drove away, I watched her oddly stylish silhouette in my rearview mirror. Just checking out rumors, my feijoada. A new dress, high-heeled shoes, nail polish, and no cigarette for two hours of banquet and presentation? Lucky for me, I knew when she was jiving me.

  Sometimes I think my van returns to Aspen Meadow by rote. And it’s a good thing too, since I was in no shape to be analytical about anything, least of all driving. I rolled down the windows and filled my lungs with hot air. It wasn’t much of a relief after the putrid-smelling warmth of the mall garage. Heat shuddered off the windows and pressed down on the van’s roof. My elbow burned the second I accidentally rested it on the fiery chrome. When I started out in the catering business, most of my jobs had been in Aspen Meadow. So of course I hadn’t bothered to get air-conditioning in my vehicle. Occasionally, like today, I regretted making that small saving.