Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Page 9

  “Tell you what,” Hal said as he reached down for a key under its tag, “we usually have a Halloween party the thirty-first and just get all the food from a grocery store. Chocolate cookies, pumpkin cake, same old stuff every year. And one of the problems this year is that our cleaning crew comes in only on Sunday when we’re closed. Halloween falls on a Saturday, so we need someone, who I thought was going to be me, to clean up after we close on Friday. If you can do the munchies and punch and decoration, plus clean up beforehand, then that’ll take care of your dues for October and November.”

  I told him the county had forbidden me to do catering. For a while.

  “Hey,” said Hal, as he screwed his tanned face into indignation, “who cares what the county thinks? You’re doing this for me. And I’m doing something for you. Ever since I burned my draft card, I haven’t worried about the law.”

  “Just don’t advertise the fact that I’m doing it, or I’ll catch hell.”

  “It’s a favor,” he said. “Don’t worry so much! It’s bad for your heart.”

  I did feel sick, but put it down to too many abdominal exercises. We settled on how many people and what kind of food he would like to have—mild Chinese, hot Mexican, and sweet American.

  “Sounds like three girls,” he said.

  I told him the cash flow problem was severe. He trundled off to get me fifty dollars from the cash register for my supplies.

  While I waited for him I glanced down at the board with its rows of glistening keys. Keys to lockers were like keys to inner selves, solutions to outer and inner mysteries. But the one enigma in my current life—who had poisoned Fritz?—was not dangling on the board. Or if it was, I couldn’t see it. Whoever did hold the key to the pellets also determined my business future. Why had someone done it? I noticed Fritz’s key and my ex-husband’s hanging under the K. Why poison someone after a funeral? Especially after the funeral of a suicide?

  What had Arch said? That Laura hadn’t gotten along with Fritz and Vonette. Carolton, Illinois, the paper had said.

  Carolton, Illinois. John Richard and I had driven by that town once on a summer trip. The highway was near where his father had had a practice a long time ago.

  I looked around for Hal. He was caught in conversation with a person carrying some weights.

  What about Laura and the Kormans’ lives before Aspen Meadow? Who knew? Unless …

  Unless the attempted poisoning of Korman had had something to do with Laura’s death. Which would explain why someone would go to the lengths of trying to do him in at her house, after her funeral, with her spirit or whatever there.

  And what about Laura’s death, anyway? How indisputable was the determination by the coroner’s office, I wondered. With no note, what made them say it was suicide?

  This wasn’t even a theory. This was an insane idea. The police were looking into the coffee poisoning. They had already decided about Laura Smiley’s death by her own hand.

  But the police would still get their salaries whether or not they were right about a woman’s death, whether or not they figured out who was playing pellets-in-the-coffee. The solution to that question directly affected my livelihood. Was I ready to trust Arch’s and my income to someone else’s intelligence and perseverance?

  I was not. Sweat dimpled my scalp. My fingers shivered.

  Hal was still talking to the guy with the weights. I would not be able to follow up on this inclination right away. I would have to wait. Wait until the club was silent, empty. Still, it would be a start.

  With one swift movement I reached down to the keys marked S, and removed one from its hook: Laura Smiley’s.

  CHAPTER 7

  At home that night I stared at the key and wondered if I’d committed a crime. So far, detection was neither enjoyable nor productive. The Grand Marnier I usually saved for cheesecakes gurgled when I poured some into one of my grandmother’s liqueur glasses. The taste like smoke and oranges burned all the way down.

  I picked up the key and felt its edges bite into my hand. Think. I would have to wait to search Laura’s locker, wait for a time when the athletic club was deserted. It would raise more questions than it was worth to be caught pilfering the goods of a dead woman. This was Monday. The best bet would be Saturday, five days away. Given the choice, most folks would rather shop than sweat on a Saturday morning.

  The liqueur did nothing to prevent another fitful night. Like most insomniacs, I fell into a deathlike sleep just as the sun was coming up. To my chagrin two interruptions shattered what could have been restful slumber.

  The first was a barely remembered encounter with Arch. Before the bus came he had been banging around the house looking for some seeds for … milk? That was what had been confusing, what had sent me back to bed. He’d said he needed it for a potion for unbelievers, which seemed even more incredible.

  The second rude awakening was from the phone.

  “What is it?” I demanded into the receiver.

  “Oh-ho, it’s the good-natured caterer, I see,” said Tom Schulz. “Resting up for housecleaning somewhere? Or do you have time to talk?”

  “What can you possibly want at this hour?”

  “It’s nine o’clock, Goldy. I could want a lot of things.”

  I sat up in bed, feeling groggy and uncomfortably warm. Either this guy was flirting with me or my paranoia was taking a turn toward the delusional.

  “Listen,” he was going on, “I was thinking about something your son said. Funny thing about your kid. He ended up being a cooperative and polite person in spite of his parents.”

  “Schulz,” I said. “Please. It’s just that I have some cooking to do.”

  “Really? Who’re you cooking for?”

  “I am going, as I told you before, over to visit my ex-in-laws. I am taking them a basket of things to eat. This has nothing to do with my business, either, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just—” I groped for words. I did not want Schulz to know of my plans to snoop around as well as ask questions. “Just because I am a nice person after all. And this way, if poison turns up in the coffee cake, you’ll know I was the one after all.”

  “Uh-huh. I’d say more like you’re going snooping to figure out what’s going on by yourself. Spite of what you say, you don’t trust the police to do their job. Goldy wants to get her business opened without benefit of law enforcement agencies, is what I’m hearing.”

  “I could be more helpful than you think.”

  “Really,” he said again, unconvinced. There was a pause. “You’re a suspect, you know.”

  “Yes, but you know I didn’t do it. In your heart of hearts.”

  “My heart of hearts, she says. About which she knows so much.”

  “Come on, Investigator Schulz.”

  Another pause. Then he said, “Well. You want to be in on the investigation? I’ll give you a chance to do just that.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “A chance, I said. That means we work together. Within the law.”

  “Uh-oh. Can’t take my Uzi when I question witnesses.”

  He sighed. “There’s something you might be able to look into. What your son said about Laura and Fritz and Vonette not getting along? Turns out they all lived in the same town for a while. Fritz and Vonette moved here from Carolton, Illinois, in 1967. Ms. Smiley came out about a year later, when her parents died. Not that that tells us anything, it’s just a strange link.”

  “They knew each other,” I said. “I already asked Vonette. Laura babysat for them during a vacation. But that was twenty years ago.”

  “Still,” he said, “it’s a link. I’m going to call out there to Carolton and see if I can do a little background checking on Laura Smiley, maybe on the Kormans, too. Ask if there was anybody else from that town who moved here. See if we get any more strange links.”

  “Like if anyone had a rodent problem twenty years ago.”

  He chuckled. “One of these days I’m going to tell you why you’re so
tough.”

  I chewed the inside of my cheek and didn’t answer.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “I thought you were itching to help out. You could do just that in your little chat with your ex-in-laws today.”

  “Will do,” I said. “And there’s something I want to find out. I was wondering if you could talk to the deputy coroner or whoever it was that said Laura was a suicide. I’d like to know why he said it was suicide.”

  “We’ll see.” He harrumphed. “I am letting you in on all this,” he went on, “because I want to help you. And of course because I care about you. As a taxpayer, of course.”

  “You care about me because you’re a taxpayer or because I’m one?”

  “As a taxpayer, you help pay my salary, Goldy,” he said with a grin I could hear. “With no income, your taxes will be lower and there goes my salary. Tell you what. How about if we talk more about this over Chinese food tonight? We could compare notes, my treat. Six o’clock at Aspen Meadow’s finest Oriental restaurant.”

  “You mean Aspen Meadow’s only Oriental restaurant.”

  “Aw,” he said, “you take all the fun out of everything.”

  I thought. It would probably be a long time before I had another chance to be taken out to dinner. Still, I wasn’t used to it. I might flunk social adeptness.

  “It’s just dinner,” he said. “Come on.”

  I could make spaghetti for Patty Sue and Arch. I could even walk to the Dragon’s Breath, since it was just off Main Street.

  I said, “Six o’clock,” and hung up.

  Nothing equals mixing and baking to clear the head, I thought after I had showered and downed a quart of coffee. Patty Sue had decided to go for a long run, she told me with an unusual amount of explanation, to get in shape for skiing. Fine. The next few hours of cooking in a quiet house stretched out like a dry road after a storm.

  The components of Goldilocks’ Cheer-Up Basket usually were the following: three different kinds of baked goods, fresh fruit in season, at least two kinds of fancy cheese, a soup or dinner that could be frozen, and a bouquet of flowers.

  For the soup I was in luck. I had already made up a quantity of Goldilocks’ Gourmet Spinach Soup and frozen it. This recipe had actually derived from a miscalculation in making Julia Child’s entrée crêpes stuffed with spinach and mushrooms. Trying to help Arch with some fourth-grade math homework while making the crêpe filling, I had ended up with quadruple the amount I needed for the crêpes. After the initial distress, I had thinned out the cheese and vegetable mixture with chicken broth, and the result had been brilliant. The success pleased customers no end. Periodically I made great quantities of the stuff, without crêpes, just to keep on hand. So Fritz and Vonette could have some.

  The senior Kormans were also partial to coffee cakes. I sometimes saw Fritz in the Aspen Meadow pastry shop indulging in an iced cinnamon roll. Unless I phoned her, Vonette never got up early enough to have a normal breakfast, but she loved my cakes anytime. So I hunted up the buttermilk, took some cream cheese out to soften, and made a New England crumb coffee cake flavored with ginger and nutmeg.

  The pièce de résistance was Goldy’s Dream Cake. This, too, was a cookbook recipe that I had messed up in the most fortuitous manner. I pulled out the ingredients, made a fingerprint in the cream cheese to make sure it had softened, and then peered at the card.

  Vonette and Fritz were not going to get one made ahead. Patty Sue and Arch could have the other one for dessert tonight after their spaghetti. Good thing they were both so thin.

  I began to measure and mix. It was all like a cake, I thought. This mess with Fritz, the unknowns about Laura. It was like having a large group of ingredients and not knowing how they were all combined.

  And what about Schulz? He wanted to trust me, wanted me to help him with the case. After John Richard, I’d grown suspicious of men and their motives. In Amour

  * * *

  Goldy’s Dream Cake

  Crumb Mixture:

  4½ cups all-purpose flour

  1½ cups sugar

  1½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces, well chilled

  Cake:

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon bakng soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  6 cups reserved crumb mixture

  2 large eggs, beaten

  1½ cups sour cream

  2 teaspoons almond extract

  Filling:

  1 pound (two 8-ounce packages) cream cheese, softened

  ½ cup sugar

  2 large eggs, beaten

  ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

  1 cup red raspberry preserves, sieved to remove seeds

  Topping:

  ⅔ cup raw whole almonds

  2 cups reserved crumb mixture

  Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter two 9- or 10-inch springform pans and set aside.

  In the large bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade, blend the flour and sugar until well combined, about 5 seconds. With the motor running, quickly drop the butter pieces through the chute, blending until the mixture resembles small, sandy crumbs, less than a minute. Measure out 6 cups of this mixture for the cake. Measure the last 2 cups of the mixture for the toppng and set aside.

  For the cake, gently stir the baking powder, soda, and salt into the 6 cups of reserved crumb mixture. In a separate bowl, mix the beaten eggs with the sour cream and almond extract, stirring until well combined. Pour the egg mixture over the crumb mixture and stir until smooth and thick. Spread the cake batter over the bottom and up the sides of each of the prepared pans.

  For the filling, beat the cream cheese, sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract in the large bowl of an electric mixer until smooth. Spread half of this mixture over the cake batter in each of the prepared pans. Top the cream cheese mixture in each pan with 1/2 cup of the sieved preserves.

  For the topping, whirl the raw almonds in a food processor fitted with the steel blade until chunky. Mix the almonds into the 2 cups reserved crumb mixture and sprinkle half of this mixture over the preserves layer in each pan.

  Bake the cakes for 45 to 55 minutes. Test with a toothpick for doneness. (All that should adhere to the toothpick is cream cheese and preserves, not cake batter.) Cool the cakes thoroughly on racks, then cover with foil and refrigerate several hours or, even better, overnight. Serve in the morning with coffee, if desired.

  Makes 2 large cakes

  * * *

  Anonymous, we sometimes joked about being addicted to hate. We worried that hostility-for-guys was what drew us together I wanted to be social again, didn’t I? I wanted someone to care about me.

  Didn’t I?

  I was just sprinkling on the crumb-and-almond mixture when the buzzer sounded the completion of the crumb cake. After placing it on a cooling rack I saw myself briefly in the reflection of the black refrigerator door. I was actually going out tonight. I would have to do something with my hair and find some garment besides a corduroy skirt. I was going to have to be sociable, and it wasn’t even for a client. I was going out with a man I knew liked me. All of a sudden, I felt sick.

  Four hours later the van was grinding its way up the steep entrance to the residential area surrounding Aspen Meadow Country Club. To call this club with its halfhearted golf and tennis offerings a country club was an overstatement. The A.M.C.C. never would measure up to any of its eastern counterparts, and migrants from Rumson and Chevy Chase and Lake Forest were quick to point this out. But then again, this was the West. Even the idea of a country club had been imported. Eastern snobbery gave Coloradans no end of psychic pain, and the natives produced a multitude of bumper stickers to express their attendant disgust. The most impudent declared, LOVE NEW YORK? TAKE HIWAY 40 EAST!

  I looked down at the basket on the seat next to me. The cakes and container of soup glistened in cellophane wrap tied with bows of yellow and orange and brown. A small arrangement of flowers dried from my own garden last year echoed the fall
colors. And speaking of bouquets, maybe I’d be able to find out this afternoon what it was Fritz deserved.

  “Well now, Goldy honey,” Vonette greeted me after the doorbell on the massive front door to their contemporary wood home had bing-bonged à la Big Ben. “Don’t you look cute! You got a date or something?”

  I winced. Was the fact that I was showered and coifed and sporting a seldom-worn black wool dress so very unusual? So very new?

  Vonette’s brilliant red hair was more disheveled than usual, but it just might have been the way it clashed with the purple Ultrasuede hostess gown.

  She said in a confidential tone, “I got a batch of margaritas going. Want one before you see Fritz?”

  I was tempted. I was about to see a doctor whom half the town thought I had tried to kill, and yet who merited something, according to an anonymous flower sender. Moreover, in a few hours I was going out on my first date in five years with the cop investigating the case. If I succumbed to the buzz from the first hit of salt, lime, and tequila, then it would be numerous margaritas later before the thirst left and the headache began. By that time I’d be knee-deep in egg rolls and moo-shu pork with my head swimming like the shreds of yolk in egg drop soup. This dismal prognosis made me ask for coffee.

  Vonette, on the other hand, professed no worry about either Oriental cuisine or the hangover to come. I followed her out to the cavernous kitchen. She waved her free hand gaily as she beeped microwave buttons to heat water for coffee. After a long swig of greenish liquid she started to talk.

  “I just don’t know what to do with him being home. He’s fussing and yapping all day about Lord knows what. That John Richard can’t see all his patients. That they need him over there. The practice, the practice. Yappety yap. That some doctor on TV is an idiot. Lord! I wished they’d have given him an injection to make him shut up!”