Killer Pancake

the fair. “What are you fixing?” he asked dubiously.

“Why don’t you let me—” Julian began.

“Absolutely not,” I broke in, “you’re taking a break. I’m fixing pasta,” I said noncommittally to Arch. Pasta was always a safe bet. What did I have on hand? Hard to remember, since Tom had taken it upon himself to buy so many goodies for us.

“What kind?” my son wanted to know.

“Arch—”

“Maybe you’d just better let me order in from the Chinese place.”

“Hey, kiddo! What are you, the plumber’s son who can’t get his leaky sink fixed for a year? I’m going to cook dinner! I may be in professional food service, but I always fix the meals around here, don’t I?”

“Well, not always—” he began, but when he saw my glowering expression, he fell silent.

Julian came to my rescue. “Come on, Arch, let’s go listen to rock groups for a while.” Julian tousled Arch’s brown hair that stuck out at various angles. Since it was summertime, I never told him to comb it. Worrying about the prep school’s dress and appearance code didn’t start until fall.

Arch pulled away. “You don’t need to take care of me, Julian. I’m okay.”

“I’m not trying to take care of you. I really want to listen to some tunes.”

“But I can’t on an empty stomach!” He narrowed his eyes at me, not to be dissuaded. “What kind of pasta? Fettuccine?”

“Fettuccine Alfredo,” I pledged. It was his favorite. If I promised it, maybe he’d quit hassling me and allow me to cook. On the other hand, how I would make a lowfat Alfredo—a dish that ordinarily required a stick of melted butter, two cups of heavy whipping cream, and loads of Parmesan cheese—was beyond my reckoning.

“I don’t believe it,” Arch replied stubbornly.

“That’s what they said when Eugene McCarthy won the New Hampshire primary,” Julian interjected.

Arch gaped at Julian in awe. “How’d you know that?”

“You’d be surprised at what you can pick up,” Julian said mysteriously. “Take the Vietnam protest, which had as one of its favorite slogans Johnson Withdraw! Like Your Father Should Have!”

I yelled, “Julian!”

Arch shrieked with laughter and scampered up the stairs.

“Gosh, Goldy,” Julian said in his get-a-life tone of voice. “Don’t you think Arch knows about sex? Sometimes I wonder about you.”

Well, I thought as I desperately scanned my freezer for cholesterol-free fettuccine, sometimes I wondered about me too. Miraculously, I found a package of the right pasta. I started water to heat in the pasta pentola. The boys had turned off Sgt. Pepper, perhaps to discuss … well, I didn’t want to think about it.

I opened the kitchen window. A late afternoon breeze floated in along with trilling notes from the saxophone at the Routts’ place. I smiled. Here we were in rural Colorado, and yet it felt as if our house sat across the alley from a New York jazz club. I chopped some red onion, then washed and sliced slender, brilliant-green asparagus that I had found in a tight bundle on the Ours! shelf. When I’d drizzled a bit of olive oil over a head of garlic and set it to bake in the oven, I thought back on the events of the day. Applying logic, or trying to.

I’d gone into Prince & Grogan trying to find Claire’s murderer. Tom had said it was all right to do some digging, as long as I didn’t get into trouble. And I had gotten into trouble, or at least been busted by store security, doused with bleach water, and told to go home. But these weren’t my fault, I rationalized.

Besides, I thought as I got out Wondra flour, I was determined to help Julian recover from Claire’s death. If I just knew why this happened, he had cried so helplessly here in the kitchen. Claire’s life had revolved around Mignon. So it seemed logical to look at what she herself had called “that cutthroat cosmetics counter.”

And, I also rationalized as I measured, since I was a woman, like it or not I was more able to get gossipy- type information than Tom and his deputies at the sheriff’s department ever would. The Mignon counter at Prince & Grogan, Westside Mall, was a place of high energy, high profit, high emotional stakes. I mean, where else could you go and be promised beauty and endless youth with such enthusiasm, conviction, and pain to your wallet? Where else did you have to watch for shoplifters, pretend to be decades older than your actual age, worry about spies from rival firms, and fend off wealthy pick-up artists in the form of weird scientists?

I poked wildly through one of my drawers until I found a grater. I’d been able to help Tom before in his investigations. Of course, he’d never particularly welcomed my involvement until it was all over. And no matter how much I maintained Julian needed my help in figuring out what happened, my protestations would fall on deaf ears.

Still. I’d heard Dusty say to Reggie Hotchkiss, We saw you. You are going to get into so much trouble. I’d been in that garage. I hadn’t seen anybody except a crazy demonstrator. But I’d found a blue rose close to Claire’s body. And that rose had perhaps been developed by Charles Braithwaite—the same Charles Braithwaite who, according to Dusty, had been infatuated by, and later broken up with, Claire Satterfield. And then there had been Babs Braithwaite, who had run into me at the top of the escalator, claiming that somebody was hiding in the women’s dressing room. Only I hadn’t found anybody in the dressing room. Except I’d unexpectedly encountered her husband again. This time Dr. Charlie had magically turned up on the roof. On the roof, that is, after Frances Markasian and I had been hit with an unhealthy dose of bleach water. I wondered if Charles Braithwaite would have had the courage to do that. He didn’t strike me as the courageous type.

LOWFAT FETTUCCINE

ALFREDO WITH

ASPARAGUS

2 tablespoons finely chopped red onion

2? cups diagonally sliced asparagus with tight tips (tough ends of stalks removed)

1 teaspoon (about 2 cloves) mashed and chopped baked garlic (see note)

? cup nonfat dry milk

1? cups skim milk or more as needed

1? tablespoons Wondra instant-blending flour

2 tablespoons light process cream cheese product (not nonfat)

? cup grated parmesan cheese 9 ounces cholesterol-free fettuccine

? cup chopped arugulaHeat a medium-size nonstick saute pan. Remove from the heat and spray with vegetable oil spray. Add the onion and saute over medium heat until limp, about 5 or 10 minutes. Add the asparagus and the garlic, cover the pan, and turn off the heat. (The steam from the onion will cook the asparagus.) In a large skillet, combine the dry milk and skim milk and whisk until blended. Add the flour, stir, and cook over medium-high heat until thickened. In a small bowl, add 2 tablespoons of the hot sauce to the cream cheese and stir until smooth. Return this mixture to the hot sauce. Add the Parmesan and stir until melted. Keep hot. If the mixture becomes too thick, thin it out with small amounts of skim milk. The consistency should be like cream, not gravy.Cook the fettuccine in boiling water according to the package directions until it is al dente; drain. Add the hot pasta and the garlic and the vegetables to the sauce in the skillet. Stir and cook over medium-low heat until heated through. Serve garnished with chopped arugula.Serves 4Note: To bake the garlic, preheat the oven to 350°. Place a whole head of garlic in a small baking pan. Drizzle one teaspoon of olive oil over the head of garlic; add ? cup water to the pan. Bake the garlic, loosely covered with aluminum foil, for 45 to 60 minutes or until the cloves are soft. The cloves will slip right out of their skins to be mashed, chopped, or served whole. The whole garlic cloves can be served as a side dish with any roast meat; the mashed garlic cloves are also delicious mixed with hot homemade mashed potatoes.

It was the bleach water, and the warning to go home, that made me realize I had