“Sorry, I thought you were somebody else.”
“… Not meaning to be disrespectful, Goldy, but maybe you need a vacation.”
That made two of us. I was still laughing when Tom Schulz called.
“Doesn’t the caterer sound merry.”
“She is, she is. First she had a great time with this cop last night.” He mm-hmmed. I went on. “This morning, though, she flunked out of surrogate-parenting. But to her rescue came this same cop, who quickly turned her house into the Denver Botanic Garden. Now for the rest of the day she has to make cookies, kowtow to some guy from California, taste jam, and have lunch with the cop.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds normal to me. Glad you like the flowers.”
“Love them. You are too generous. But listen, I need to tell you some stuff Marla’s found out.” I told him about Egon Schlichtmaier’s allegedly shabby history and current alleged affair, along with the possibility that these items were going to get some journalistic exposure at the hands of the ambitious Keith Andrews.
“Okay, look,” he said when I’d finished, “I may be a bit late for lunch. I’m going 90wn to check on a murder in Lakewood. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t involve me. But the victim’s name was Andrews.”
I was instantly sober. “Any relation to the late valedictorian?”
“Not that we can figure out. The victim’s name was Kathy. They found her body in a field two weeks ago. Her head had been bashed in. Suspect is her ex-boyfriend, who owed her a couple thousand, but the investigators down there can’t find him. Anyway, one of the things they’re looking at is that Kathy Andrews’ mail was stolen. And get this ? she had an account at Neiman-Marcus. ‘K Andrews’ on her card, they said.’
“I don’t get it. Was it a robbery/murder?”
“That’s the strange thing. Kathy Andrews was single, had a lot of money that she liked to spend. Looks like a lot of her mail might have been stolen, from the way she was complaining to the local post office. Maybe somebody was in the act of stealing letters and she caught them. That’s what the Lakewood guys are trying to reconstruct.?
“Why would someone steal her mail?”
“Same reason they take your purse, Miss G. For cash or checks, is what we usually see. Or vandalism. They’re going through all Kathy Andrews’ stuff, trying to check back with what she might have been expecting. But when something that was mailed-in this case a credit card-doesn’t show up, you wonder. According to their records, Neiman-Marcus mailed it sometime in the last month.”
I touched the phone wire, then quickly let go of it., I tried to wipe out the mental image of a woman I did not know. Kathy Andrews. “Did you talk to the Marenskys about their raccoon coat?”
“They claim it was stolen at some party.”
“Well, I’m confused.”
“You’re not alone, Miss G. See you around noon.”
Something red and white. Not a barber pole, not a candy cane, not an embarrassed zebra. Something worthy of a visit from the school that had produced Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, Jim Plunkett, and John Elway.
Since I thought a football-shaped cookie would be a bit too difficult to manage on such short notice, I decided on a rich white cookie with a red center. I beat butter with cream cheese and let my mind wander back to Julian. His abrupt departure that morning left me troubled. Julian, in his fourth year at Elk Park Prep, was bright and extremely competent. He had stunned me with the creativity of his project on DNA research. But his classmates were smart and productive too, and they had money to aid them in all their academic pursuits. I creamed in sugar and then swirled in dark, exotic-smelling Mexican vanilla, which I sniffed heartily. Julian cared about his school, not with a rah-rah cheerleader spirit, but with such a fierce loyalty that he was willing to risk a fight with Keith Andrews to keep a scandal out of the newspapers. I sifted flour in to make a stiff batter. Julian was passionate about people and cooking. The latter trait, I had long ago decided, was another way of being passionate about people. For all those therapy bills, I’d figured out a few things.
As my spatula scraped the golden batter off the sides of the bowl, I recalled the shy and happy look that had begun to creep over Julian’s usually hostile face during the past summer, whenever Schulz or Arch or I had begged him to make his tortellini della panna, spinach pie in filo, or fudge with sun-dried cherries. Julian cared about me and about Schulz, and he was wild about Arch. The events of the past week had caused him great strain. Poor overwrought eighteen-year-old, I thought, what can I do to help you care less about us and more about your future?
Red ‘n’ Whites
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 3-ounce package cream cheese, softened
? cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract )
2 cups all-purpose flour
36 small ripe strawberries, hulled and halved
Preheat the oven to 350°. In a mixing bowl, beat the butter with the cream cheese until well blended. Beat in the sugar and vanilla, then stir in the flour until well mixed. Using a 1/2 -tablespoon measure, shape the mixture into small balls and place 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets. Make a small indentation in the top of each cookie with your thumb. Carefully place a strawberry half, cut side down, in each indentation. Bake for 12 to 18 minutes or until very lightly browned. Cool on racks. Makes 5 dozen.
I stared at the creamy concoction. My supplier had recently delivered several quarts of fresh strawberries. I decided to cut them up and use them to top each cookie, for the red and white effect. The things a caterer is called upon to do. I rolled dainty half-tablespoonfuls of dough into spheres, thumb-printed the lot, and then put a half of a strawberry, seed-side up, in the little indentations. I slapped the cookie sheets into the oven, set the timer, then fixed another espresso.
Fifteen minutes later I was munching on the luscious results. They were like tiny cheesecakes, something you would have at an English tea. I decided to dub them something catchy. Red ‘n’ Whites, maybe. And speaking of something catchy, I decided then and there to beg Julian to let me help him with the SAT drill-questions, if he was still interested. How hard could it be? I already knew the opposite of tranquil: today’s lunch.
Two hours later, toting three doily-covered trays and a wrapped package of six dozen Red ‘n’ Whites, I pulled into the parking lot of the Aspen Meadow Cafe. The Dawsons had tried hard to make their restaurant appear as continental as possible. There was no question that the cafe’s sleek, glassed exterior was a far cry from the more casual health food and Western barbecue spots that peppered Aspen Meadow, places where tourists or construction workers or psychic massage practitioners could grab a noontime bite. No, the folks who frequented this cafe were, for the most part, not the kind who had to go out and work for a living, at least not full-time. Or they belonged to a growing group of professionals who could put on cowboy hats and wander out for a two-hour lunch.
I eased the van between a Mercedes (license plate: LOIR; I guess ATURNIE was already taken) and Buick Riviera (URSIK; now, how was that to inspire confidence in an M.D.?). The cafe was sandwiched in the dark- paneled, turquoise-trimmed shopping center known as Aspen Meadow North. There was Aspen Meadow Florist, whose blossoms Schulz had recently decimated, and Aspen Meadow Interior Design, with its perennially southwest window display. Tasteful Halloween decorations adorned the windows of upscale boutiques. Next to the cafe was the undecorated window of Aspen Meadow Weight Control Center. Ah, irony!
I entered the cafe and passed the baskets of braided breads and puffed brioches, passed the cheese case with its Stiltons, Camemberts, and buffalo mozzarellas, and came up to the glass case of desserts. Luscious-looking apricot cream tortes, multilayered chocolate mousse cakes, and all manner of truffles called put for attention. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the exclamations of delight that would greet my Happy Endings Plum Cake when it held a prominent place in front of the displayed concoctions.
Audrey had already arrived with Heather, whose pouty expression and slumped posture next to the Stiltons did not indicate happy-camper status. Audrey, utterly oblivious to her daughter’s funk, sidled up to me and warned,
