The Main Corpse

Tomato-Brie Pie-2

Under the current slender-bookings circumstances, I decided to be eager to please. I turned a blinding smile toward Mrs. Hardcastle, a willowy, sixtyish woman whose swept-up henna hair and bright yellow polka-dotted suit with matching pumps were a vision of scarlet and yellow. Both the suit skirt and the pumps had become muddy en route to the tent. Her white-haired husband Whit—short for Whitaker, I’d learned when I catered at their cabin by Bride’s Creek last fall—shuffled uncomfortably and craned his long neck inside a knotted tie that appeared to be decorated with spackling compound. On the other side of Edna stood a short, blond man I recognized as restaurateur Sam Perdue, the proprietor of Sam’s Soups in Aspen Meadow.

Sam’s Soups, a year-old eatery by the lake that I had not yet visited, must be doing awfully well, I thought. Sam had prepared the soup for the Hardcastles’ party in the fall, while the bulk of the preparation had fallen to me. But if Sam Perdue could afford to park his cash with Prospect Financial Partners, that meant he’d anted up the minimum investment of a hundred-thousand-dollars. Digging out my soup recipe file seemed suddenly appealing. “Sam?” I tried not to sound envious, merely curious. “Are you getting lots of orders for soup these days? I mean, because of the bad weather?”

“No,” he said softly. He didn’t appear to be eating anything, and his slender fingers held an iceless glass of water.

Mrs. Hardcastle, undeterred, raised her voice. “Usually the Prospect Partners have Cherry Creek Caterers. But … I understand CCC couldn’t make it all the way up here, so the partners called you, instead, Goldy.” Her tone made it clear who her first choice would have been.

“Oh, ah, well,” I started to reply apologetically, “actually it was Marla Korman …”

“On the other hand, you and Sam did such a lovely job last fall, catering the land preservation fund-raiser at our cabin. People are still talking about that roast pork with … whatever it was.”

“Cumberland sauce. I’m so pleased to hear this.” I tried to sound gracious, humble, and deserving of more bookings.

Mrs. Hardcastle went on wistfully, “The weather’s so dreadful this spring, I don’t know when we’ll get up to the cabin again.…”

Here it comes, I thought. You did a great job last year, but this year we can’t use you.

“It’s a lovely setting, Mrs. Hardcastle.” I wanted to say, Do the words Bride’s Creek make your daughter think of anything relating to her future? Instead, I assumed a concerned tone. “How is your daughter?”

“Let’s not talk about it, shall we?” Edna Hardcastle’s face twisted. “Let’s talk about …” Her pained gaze shifted to the mine opening, and she shuddered. She didn’t want to talk about investing in the Eurydice, either. Perhaps it was those nauseating memories of claustrophobia. She sniffed. “Oh, dear …”

“I’m sorry, I was just hoping that—”

“Goldy?” Edna Hardcastle’s voice was once again drenched with false cheer. “Are you an investor? I mean, do you invest in food concepts?” She paused, and her face became solemn. “Do you even understand food concepts?”

“Er, well, sort of.” I glanced at the gaggle of Prospect clients oohing and ahing over the gold bars in the display case. Maybe they hungered for some concept hors d’oeuvre. “It looks as if I might need to check the chafing dish and portable ovens—”

Edna dismissed my protest by waving a quesadilla in my face. “Tony Royce said you were going to taste the soups at Sam’s place. It’s a concept restaurant,” she said, with a knowing look at Sam Perdue. “And Tony’s thinking of bringing Prospect in. Have you done it yet?”

“Concept restaurant?” Sweat trickled down the inside of my caterer’s uniform. I knew the restaurant Sam managed was one in a chain. A very short chain, as in two. What was Edna talking about? This was not the time to figure it out, for the bacon smell was getting stronger. “Ah, no. Tony hasn’t mentioned my doing any tasting. Marla does his testing, anyway, or she used to—”

I looked at Sam for help. He was obviously miserable. “I’m hoping the Prospect partners will take my chain public,” he murmured. “If Albert and Tony like my restaurant, it’ll mean I can stay in business.”

I nodded. So soups weren’t doing so well, either. I didn’t hold out much hope for Sam. Marla said people were always approaching Tony and Albert looking for investors. Which usually meant needing a quick cash bailout.

Edna quirked hennaed eyebrows that matched her hair. “I told Tony that food was a better investment than an abandoned mine!”

“Well, perhaps you should tell him again,” I murmured sympathetically as I scanned the tent for Macguire.

“I did! I told him—”

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, “Mrs. Hardcastle? Thanks for the kind words and your … confidence in … food.” It was lame, but it was the best I could do. “I do need to be off now because I’ve really, really got something burning back here.”

With another sniff that didn’t speak well for my getting future bookings, Edna Hardcastle grasped one of Sam’s elbows, turned on the heel of one of her splattered yellow shoes, and strode away with Sam in tow. Whit Hardcastle patted his white hair, straightened his spackled tie, and waddled after her. Some rich people can’t abide it when a servant terminates a conversation, I’d found. They want the honor of doing that themselves. If I snubbed Mrs. Hardcastle, it would become town news. And I could not afford any bad news with my business in peril.

At the back of the tent, Macguire was cautiously removing the sheet of bubbling bacon hors d’oeuvre from the oven and muttering, “Uh-oh. I couldn’t tell how long they’d been in. There’s no timer on these ovens.”

“They’re okay,” I said as I eyed the glistening appetizers. I held up a paper-towel-covered platter. “Just use a spatula to scoop them out to drain.”

This Macguire did. I held a silver platter over the hors d’oeuvre, flipped the two trays, then handed the platter of wrapped artichokes back to him. He placed a bowl of the Dijon cream sauce in the center of the tray and lumbered off to the group gathered around the display case.

I visually searched the clutter behind the counter for the chafer I was going to use to reheat the shrimp dumplings. I had managed to sully the space with heaps of trays, pans of appetizers, and row upon row of beer bottles. To my surprise, I caught sight of Tony Royce. He was rummaging through the Cambro.

“Tony! Why aren’t you mingling with your guests?”

Tony uncoiled his athletic body and frowned at me. He gnawed on his perfectly trimmed bottle-brush mustache, brushed unseen lint from his khaki pants and khaki shirt, and smoothed his pouffed hair, which had not been flattened by the miner’s hard hat. He looked like Hitler with a blow-dry.

“Well, Goldy, they’re not all here, for one thing. For another, I don’t want to have to listen to Edna Hardcastle tell me how great Sam’s soups are. We’re going to look at the place, the clients know that. But Victoria tried them and she didn’t …” His voice trailed off, and his eyes darted back to the Cambro.

I wanted to be polite to Tony, since he was my employer for this particular shindig. I was also keenly interested to know what the late Victoria Lear’s involvement in food concepts might have been. But I had cooking to do and we were in the middle of a party. Besides, I didn’t want to argue with Tony—yet—about his appointing me to be Prospect’s taste tester to succeed Marla and the deceased financial officer.

“Look, can you help me?” His voice grew desperate. “I need a vodka martini to clear the mine dampness out of my head. I hate that god-awful place. Do you have a freezer back here with some Stoly? Am I looking in the wrong place?”

I smiled. The new test for machismo, I’d learned, was to take long draughts from an icy bottle of Stolichnaya vodka. Even more macho was to slug down the vodka while gobbling a plateful of jalapeño peppers. “Sorry, Tony. We’ve just got beer and coffee.” I finally spotted the chafer and hurried over to it. “What guests aren’t here?”

Tony frowned, popped the top off a bottle of stout, and took a long swig. Hey! I’m a guy, I don’t need a glass! “Who’s not here? Marla’s brother-in-law, for one thing. I’ve never even met the guy, but I sure have heard a lot about him.”

“General Farquhar?” I tried to conceal my surprise by opening the chafer cover in front of my face.

Tony paused with the stout bottle halfway to his lips and eyed me curiously. “Yeah, after the Medigen IPO got so much publicity, we had all kinds of people wanting to get into the Eurydice venture. Farquhar sent us a check and said he was too busy to come in.”

Too busy. Right. Too busy in jail. I pretended to be absorbed with the contents of the chafer. Thank heavens Macguire had already filled the bottom pan—the bain-marie—with hot water. Tiny bubbles floated promisingly upward. I heaved up the hotel pan with the shrimp dumplings and lowered it into place.

“Hey, Tony,” I said. “I need to borrow a watch. There’s no timer on the oven, and we almost burned the bacon appetizers.”

Tony glanced at his gleaming Rolex. He said solemnly, “You’re not borrowing my watch.”

Okay, so his watch probably cost more than my van. I kept my voice courteous. “Well, could you tell me when ten minutes is up?”

He nodded, swallowed the last of his stout, and popped the top off another. Albert Lipscomb’s bald head shone like an approaching beacon under the tent lights as he strode toward us. He put down a plate with a half-eaten quesadilla and leaned toward his partner.

“Tony, Captain Shockley wants to talk to us about Victoria,” Albert said in a low voice. Tony groaned and took a swig of stout from the new bottle. Albert persisted glumly: “He’s very upset. We need to talk to him.”

“My head’s full of damp air. He’s your friend. You talk to him.”

Albert sighed and rubbed his scalp. “Oh, all right.”

But he didn’t have a chance. Marla strode up, pinched a wad of Albert’s madras jacket, and yanked him in the direction of the shed.

“I don’t want you to leave before we have a talk,” she announced. “About assay reports. Let’s go in here with the cap lamps and have a chat.”

Albert, dumbfounded, looked at Tony for help. Then his mournful eyes turned back to Marla. “I don’t understand what … what is so important—”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Marla snapped. She let go of his jacket and put one hand on an ample hip. She shook her other hand in a furious fist under Albert Lipscomb’s nose.

“Wait, wait,” I implored, with a harried glance out at the center of the tent. “Don’t talk about this now. Don’t ruin the party.…”

Tony was suddenly between the two of them. He lifted his dark eyebrows and bit his mustache. He murmured, “For heaven’s sake, guys, this is not the time …” He put his hands on Marla’s shoulders. “Please, sweetheart, you know you shouldn’t distress yourself. You could get sick—”

Marla shot him a withering glance and slapped his hands away. “I’ll talk to you later, Tony. This whole thing was his idea, not yours, and you’re being duped, too. So move back.”

Tony, aghast, took two steps away from them. Marla and Albert advanced in the direction of the corrugated metal shed. Or rather, that was as far as Marla could back Albert up. With a hasty glance at the guests, Tony followed them. I used tongs to move the dumplings around, keeping an eye on the confrontation. What had gotten into Marla? Couldn’t whatever it was wait?