Killer Pancake

done, I could move the meat into a heated serving area. And none too soon, as the health inspector showed up just slightly later than scheduled. He impassively surveyed the spread and plunked his trusty thermometer first into the pile of cooked ribs, then the salad being kept cold in the speed cart. He wiped, the thermometer meticulously each time, giving a little nod. He asked to see the bleach water and I showed it to him. Then he nodded approvingly, refused a cookie, and moved on to the next booth.

Within moments the first batch of visitors shaking their little food fair bracelets appeared on our line of booths. The mall walkers, who had clustered, giggling, around Pete’s coffee machine, descended on my booth as if they hadn’t eaten in a month. The ribs bubbled invitingly in the barbecue sauce, and I transferred two at a time from the chafer to small paper plates next to the cups of strawberry-sugar snap pea salad, slices of cranberry bread, and piles of frosted fudge cookies. Cries of “Oh, no, I’m supposed to buy a bathing suit today” did not remotely allay appetites. Thank goodness. Hunger makes the best sauce, my two-hundred-fifty-pound fourth-grade teacher had once said, and it seemed she was right.

For the next two hours I was so busy filling plates, cooking ribs, and chatting with shoppers about how Goldilocks’ Catering could turn their next party into an event that I barely noticed anything outside my own food space. At eleven fifty-five, however, the two co-owners of Upcountry Barbecue showed up to claim my booth, and I was forced to take stock.

“Aw, no, Roger,” exclaimed one, “she’s got barbecue too! This is gonna ruin us!”

“I don’t see any Rocky Mountain oysters,” replied Roger with a smirk. “You gal-cooks just don’t have the guts to serve real western food. Ain’t that right?”

I grinned at Roger and his partner. “I know the women who frequent this mall will love the sliced reproductive organ of buffalo. Especially if you roast ’em, put ’em on croissants, and tell the gals exactly what you’re serving. Ain’t that right, boys?”

Roger and partner exchanged a rueful glance. They’d forgotten the damn croissants.

My food was gone. A hundred fifty portions in two morning hours wasn’t bad, I figured, and I’d given out over a hundred menus and price lists. The grills and speed cart would be cleaned by the food fair staff and stay locked in place, so I had only one box of supplies to take down to the van. Once the box was stashed, I leaned against the closed van doors. Sudden inactivity made me realize just how hot and exhausted I was. I’d get my check, chat with Dusty, reconnoiter with Julian, visit Marla, then go home and crash. At least that was what I planned as I hauled myself up and walked down toward the entrance to Prince & Grogan. Before I could get there, however, I stopped and shuddered.

Maybe I have too active an imagination. Maybe I watch too many movie reruns with Arch. But seeing people—or even those boys in the film version of Lord of the Flies—wearing war paint just sends fear ripping through my bloodstream. People can hide their basest selves behind a veneer of fierce black and white stripes. Transformed, they can claim not to be responsible for what they do. I didn’t know whether I was willing to be the victim of irresponsible aggression as I now stood facing at least sixty war-painted demonstrators jostling each other and their signs in back of police sawhorses by the Prince & Grogan entrance.

“When you buy, rabbits die!” they shouted at the few customers brave enough to scuttle timidly past the saw-horses and into the store.

Worse, there wasn’t a policeman in sight. But then a woman strode confidently to the store entrance. Oh, Lord. The woman entering through the highly polished doors thirty paces in front of me was Frances Markasian.

She had told me on the phone she was coming to see me at the mall food fair. She hadn’t shown up. And yet here she was, going into Prince & Grogan.

My check could wait. I swallowed hard and decided to follow Frances. When I came to the sawhorses, the demonstrators surged forward and screeched.

“Are you dying for mascara?”

“Do you care that innocent animals are tortured for your makeup?”

One waved a sign directly in front of my face: DIE FOR BEAUTY it proclaimed, with a photograph of a pile of dead rabbits. I felt my face turning red, but I concentrated on getting through the doors on the track of the Mountain Journal’s premier investigative reporter.

Someone’s elbow jostled me and my ears rang from the shouted insults, but moments later, I was safely inside. I scanned the opulent store interior. Frances Markasian had made a detour into accessories and was fingering the various leathers of expensive handbags. Once again she was, as my parents would say, all dolled up. This time she sported a scarlet dress with a flared skirt, scarlet heels, and scarlet scarf twisted in some remarkably woven way through her mass of black hair. I quickly paralleled her step as she minced past a table display of wallets and headed for the far side of the Mignon counter. I slithered into the shoe department that faced that side of the cosmetics counter. Frances had spied on me so many times that I felt no compunction about seeing what she was up to this time. It had even become something of a game between us. Whatever today’s game was, the fact that it required two disguises in three days made it extremely interesting.

“I’m here because I need help with my face,” I heard Frances inform Harriet Wells. Dusty was waiting on a man I vaguely recognized—the tall blond fellow I’d seen in the shoe department that morning. Maybe he was an undercover cop.

Harriet looked at Frances and frowned. “What would you say is the skin problem you’d like to correct the most?” she asked politely.

Out in the aisle between the cosmetics counter and the shoe department, a five-tiered display of plastic boxes filled with a navy-blue and gold display of Mignon lipsticks, soaps, toners, and creams offered a hiding place. I ducked behind it.

Within moments, Harriet’s voice rose slightly. She was trying to sell Frances some concealer, and Frances was making such uncharacteristically enthusiastic responses that I ducked around the plastic box holding the Fudge Mousse lipstick and Nectarine Desire blush for a better view. From there, I could watch Harriet without her seeing me, since all her attention was focused on Frances, who was whining, “But I just want to look younger.” Uh-huh.

“This is Rejuvenation, the newest product to come out of Mignon’s European labs.” Harriet delicately gripped the pale, ribbed cylindrical bottle. “It has biochromes in it, and just look at what it’s done for my skin.” She lifted her free palm like a fan toward her superbly painted face. “I’m sixty- two,” she declared with a sunny smile. “Rejuvenation will take two decades off your face.”

“Sixty-two?” Frances echoed with loud incredulity as she shifted uncomfortably in the red spike heels. “I would have sworn you weren’t a day over fifty-five!”

A tiny frown appeared between Harriet’s eyebrows, then swiftly disappeared. I myself wouldn’t have put Harriet’s age over fifty.

“The biochromes penetrate to the deepest layer of the skin. They actually stop the aging process,” Harriet announced proudly.

“Is that right? How much for a big bottle of that?” Frances asked brightly.

“Well,” mused Harriet, “you need all the preparations to do the complete job. It’s like the four basic food groups. First we start with the pre-cleanser….” Here she frowned at Frances and shook her head. “Here, you hold the Rejuvenation while I look for the right cleanser for your skin.” She handed the bottle to Frances, who turned it, held it out at arm’s length, and grimaced. Harriet groped beneath the counter. When she reemerged, she gave Frances’s face a swift, shrewd assessment. “It really does look as if you have quite a bit of damage to your skin. Did your dermatologist send you?” When Frances shook her head, Harriet asserted, “You could certainly benefit from one of our rejuvenating cleansers …” and then she chided and explained and piled creams and cosmetics on the counter until Frances’s tab was, by my reckoning, well over four hundred dollars.

I leaned in closer to Harriet and Frances, but was stunned to be interrupted in my eavesdropping by a stocky fellow who edged in beside me and asked: “What are they saying?” He smiled at me as if this were some kind of joke only the two of us were in on. He had dark brown hair and short, stubby fingers that he drummed on his knees as he crouched next to me.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied huffily, and straightened up.

“Is that your boyfriend?” he asked as if he hadn’t heard my answer. His accent was flat and midwestern. His arms seemed too short for his body when he gestured knowingly in the direction of the tall blond man with