The Whole Enchilada

Prologue-2

At another meeting, Holly told us that while she was with George, she’d thought she could make her own money if she established a career. That did not work out—at least, not during the marriage.

When Holly didn’t make a fortune from her paintings, it surprised her. She was into astrology and had had her chart done. The stars had apparently predicted that she was going to be a very successful artist. I’d found this interesting. Whenever my catering business teetered on the brink of collapse, I was afraid to consult anything but a cookbook.

By the time Drew was seven, Holly had sold only three canvases. I learned this not from Holly, but from Edith, who’d begun telling anyone who would listen that her daughter-in-law was a dilettante who couldn’t be bothered to raise her own son. Inevitably, some of this was reported back to Holly. Holly told us she confronted Edith for talking behind her back, and that the older woman loudly retorted that Holly sure had an awfully expensive hobby!

But I had to give Holly—or her chart—credit: after divorcing George, she started over. During her year in Denver, she went back to art school, and started fashioning something she called portrait-collages. She sold so many works she developed a lengthy client waiting list.

When the Denver Post interviewed Holly, she gleefully repeated Edith’s expensive hobby comment. Intuiting a sensational story, the Post sagely snapped photo after photo of Holly, as gorgeous as ever, posed seductively in front of her latest work. I wondered how long it had taken Edith, who now shared her mansion with George and his second wife, Lena, to tear that article into teensy-weensy pieces and burn it, maybe in a discarded oil drum.

Unlike what I was sure Holly’s ex-mother-in-law thought, I was happy that my friend had found career success. We all seemed to be healing and moving on, and the meetings of Amour Anonymous became less frequent. Still, when we did meet, Holly would invariably confide that she was skiing, hiking, or playing squash with somebody special. She would say her latest client was making her beaucoup bucks. She would bring out photos of Drew scoring goals in soccer.

At the time, I wasn’t seeing anybody, and Arch was giving me fits. In the career department, I found that my catering clients could be willful, demanding, or suddenly bankrupt. But I did adore my friend, and I was happy for her. The snowy day she’d pulled me out of a funk remained a high point of that painful time.

I took the first batch of enchiladas out of the oven, set them aside to cool, and began rolling the filling inside the new batch of softened tortillas. I frowned, because this was where my story about my friend went off track. Whose fault was that? I had asked myself the same question repeatedly, but hadn’t yet come up with an answer.

In January of this year, Holly had abruptly pulled Drew out of Elk Park Prep—where she’d kept him all these years—and put him into Denver’s Christian Brothers High School. CBHS was an enormous Catholic school that was not nearly as glamorous or expensive as EPP. But Arch had found a home there. He’d made friends, discovered a sport—fencing—and made the varsity. Drew tried out for the fencing team and made it. And the boys, who could drive themselves to school, began carpooling. They again became close pals.

I phoned Holly several times after Drew transferred to CBHS. But she returned fewer than half my calls. She finally agreed to come to a reunion of Amour Anonymous. Everyone but Holly and Marla had moved away, and our conversation centered on the fact that Holly couldn’t believe I had taken notes at all our meetings. Imagine, in this day of every imaginable technological device! She said she “wasn’t really in a relationship,” whatever that meant. She drank a glass of wine, ate a cheese puff, and left.

Maybe it was harder to resume friendships when you were older. Even though Holly came back to St. Luke’s, she rarely stayed to chat. She remained mum on why Drew had changed schools.

So, unlike the old days, Holly didn’t talk about herself much. She didn’t want to get together. She didn’t talk about anybody special.

I found all this very odd.

Still, I’d been happy when Arch said he and Drew wanted a joint party. April, when their actual seventeenth birthdays occurred, was full of school commitments. If they held the party two months late, Arch worried, would that jam me up with the wedding season? Would a potluck work? Absolutely, I said. April in Aspen Meadow could be bitterly cold, extremely snowy, or both. This year, Aspen Meadow Lake had stayed frozen well into spring, delighting a small band of risk-taking skaters. May had brought snowfall, followed by rain, which brought hopeful anglers.

By mid-June, though, daytime temperatures were reaching the seventies. Brief showers punctuated the afternoons. Those same fishermen were happily pulling wriggling trout from the still-frigid waters. The risk takers had shed their blades and were riding their twelve-speeds too close to the tourist traffic.

Once the boys decided on their bash, as they called it, Holly phoned me. She apologized, but said she was too busy with her work to help with the festivities. I told her that was fine, and not to worry about it.

Marla, bless her, had insisted the celebration be held at her new house in the Meadowview area of Aspen Meadow Country Club. The boys wanted Tex-Mex food, and I’d volunteered to put together chips, guacamole, enchiladas … or whatever they wanted. Arch said he didn’t want me to do it all. I replied that other parents had offered to bring Mexican dishes. And I loved not having to clean and set up our house, or my nearby conference center, which was, thankfully, almost fully booked for the summer season.

So here I was the day before the party: reminiscing, sashaying around our home kitchen, beating golden corn-bread batter, and making enchiladas. They weren’t the typical beef-bean type one had at restaurants, but my own variation of enchiladas suizas. They were a favorite of Arch’s. When I tried to explain to him that the dairy-rich dish had been developed in Mexico for the Sanborn coffee shops, he’d said, “Great, Mom. Thanks.” His pale cheeks flamed and his toast-brown eyebrows quirked. “And please don’t string up a piñata. I’m not five.”

“Oh-kay.”

No matter that my own son had no interest in piñatas or the provenance of dishes, no matter how problematic my regular clients occasionally were, I still loved cooking. With my business, I’d finally managed to turn my passion for feeding people into a moneymaker. Or at least, it was a moneymaker most of the time. I still had the occasional drunken host or crazed bridezilla, either of whom could cause a scene or have a full-fledged meltdown.

Lucky for me, Tom packed a gun in his work with the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. Of course, he wouldn’t bring it out at one of my parties. Whenever anything threatened to go wrong, if Tom was there, he used that tone of voice. It scared the innocent and the guilty alike.

I was happy that the boys’ party would give the fencing team and parents, plus friends, a chance to get together before summer began in earnest. And would Arch really kill me if we strung up a piñata? I asked Tom. Yes, Tom replied. He would.

For the Tex-Mex celebration, my vegetarian assistant, Julian Teller, had set himself the task of making chile relleno tortas. In his midtwenties, Julian was compact, muscled, handsome, and perpetually grizzled-looking. Although I tried just to taste my own cooking to season it, when Julian tossed together cheeses, picante, and chiles, then poured a smooth mixture of eggs and cream on top, my mouth watered. Once the first batch of pies came out, I knew I would want to find a large spoon and dig in.

That Thursday afternoon, as Julian waited for the first two tortas to finish baking, he tapped the toe of one of his high-top sneakers on the floor. He said, “I’m just going to check what else we have going on this weekend.” The third and fourth tortas sat on the counter, awaiting their time in the oven. I spooned the corn-bread batter into buttered pans and checked the timer for when they could go in. All the dishes would be made that day, to be reheated the next, at Marla’s.

“In the computer,” I replied. Yes, we now had several laptops: one in the kitchen for my business, one for Tom in his basement office, and one in Arch’s room. Times did change, but I still wrote things down, as did Tom when he worked crime scenes. Any little thing could help you find a murderer, he always said. Specks of dropped ash. A forgotten print. Some detail that, if you didn’t record it, could let a killer get away.

Julian clicked through screens to get to my calendar. He perused one, then zipped to the next. Kids’ tech skills always amazed me.

“We have that church dinner Sunday night,” he said. He squinted as he read. “Plan Your Funeral? Really?”

“Father Pete figured saying he was going to discuss death would drive people away.” We all loved Father Pete, the rotund priest at St. Luke’s, even when he was bent on talking about the hereafter.

Julian regarded me quizzically. “Well, it did. Only a dozen people have signed up.”

I shrugged. “We extended the reservation deadline to Saturday, and opened the dinner to the community at large. So blame him if it’s a flop.”

Julian did not take his eyes off the computer. “I’m not going to blame Father Pete for anything. The man is obsessed with my fudge with sun-dried cherries.” He clicked to a new screen, then another. “Hold on. We have Arch and Drew’s party tomorrow night, then Saturday we’re off, then we have the church dinner the following night, and then another party, Monday night?”

“Yup. Better still, for the rest of the summer, Goldilocks’ Catering is booked.”

“The next few days will be packed.” Julian sounded dubious, but was interrupted by the doorbell. I asked him to get it. He trotted down the hall, peered through the eyehole, then raced back. “It’s Neil Unger.”

There was a gentle knocking on our front door. Julian and I cringed.

“Better let him in,” I whispered. The party we were doing Monday night was a surprise twenty-first-birthday celebration for Neil’s painfully shy, awkward daughter, Ophelia. At that moment, I really didn’t want to talk to Neil, or rather, listen to him. In his midfifties, barrel-chested, and charming, Neil had formed a group that was supposed to be working on bringing morals back into our culture. During the planning of Ophelia’s party, I’d nodded politely as Neil gave me his homily on The Decline of Everything. I’d kept my lips buttoned, which showed unusual restraint on my part, if I did say so myself.

“I know you,” Neil said to Julian, who had opened the front door. “Boulder, right?” He said it like, You’re from hell, correct? When Julian murmured in the affirmative, Neil asked, “Could you please take my driver a snack? He didn’t have time for breakfast. I need to talk to Goldy.”

“Yes, sir,” Julian said, waggling his eyebrows at me as he followed Neil down our hall. Julian unobtrusively slipped into the walk-in, pulled out some chocolate-filled croissants, nabbed a bottle of sparkling water, and disappeared.

When Neil smiled at me, I swallowed. He had a handsome, chisel-cut face, with charisma to match. But I was in no mood to find out why he was in my kitchen. I caught a whiff of his spicy aftershave, then blinked at his perfect steel-gray hair, which looked as if it had been set in wide furrows that morning with a wide-tooth comb and an entire can of gel. He said gently, “I was hoping you could help me.”

“Help you—?”

He rubbed his dimpled chin. “I’m afraid my daughter knows about the party.”

“Not from me,” I said.

“Could you please check your computer?” His tone was plaintive as he waved a hand at the screen. “Maybe you’ve been hacked.”

“I have not been hacked.”

“How would you even know? Could you check? Please?”

Neil belonged to the country club and was influential in Furman County politics. I couldn’t afford to alienate him. I clamped my mouth shut, tapped keys to run a virus check, and hoped I was doing it correctly.

“I wanted to give Ophelia a book on fiscal responsibility,” Neil said as he ranged around the kitchen, nervously opening cabinets, then closing them. “But her stepmother vetoed that idea. So I bought her a gold bracelet. With charms.”

“That sounds wonderful.” I squinted at the screen and cleared my throat.

“My first wife died of cancer when Ophelia was very young.” He exhaled. “I just want the party to be a success.”

“It will be. Please sit down.”

Neil Unger continued moving around my kitchen. He was behind me, so I ostentatiously took my hands off the keyboard. He finally scraped back a chair. He said, “I think my daughter’s fiancé is a rhino.”

“A rhino?”

“Republican in name only. I haven’t said anything. I just worry for her.”

“Um,” I said, still staring back at the screen. I prayed the virus scan was working its way through my files. “Do the fiancé’s politics really matter?”

“I suppose not. Ophelia just seems so … unhappy.”

I thought back to Arch’s years of misery. “I’m a big believer in counseling—”

“The talking cure?” He groaned. “We tried that once. She refused to speak.”

The scan ended, with no viruses detected. I turned around and looked at Neil Unger, who at that moment resembled a puppy who’d just been rescued from drowning. He seemed to want to talk to someone. But right then, I didn’t want to listen.

Julian reentered the kitchen and took in our little tableau: short caterer looking sympathetic, political heavyweight looking pathetic. I said softly, “My computer hasn’t been hacked. If Ophelia knows about the party, she heard it from someone else.”

Neil quirked his silver eyebrows, glared at the floor, and shook his head. He nodded at Julian and me, then left as quickly as he’d come in.

“That guy’s a jackass,” Julian said as he slid the last two tortas into the preheated oven.

“A jackass with a big checkbook and lots of friends.”

“They’re the worst kind.” Julian set the timer. “Boss, we have a full schedule for the next few days. You can hire another caterer, give him or her the food you’ve ordered, and forget Unger. When I did a party for him, I had to listen to his political views. It’s not an experience I’m going to forget anytime soon.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“We have three parties in four days.” Julian paused. “Are you sure you know what we’re getting into?”

I actually laughed.