Killer Pancake

held up in two perky pigtails. Her outfit matched Tony’s. Although I didn’t know her, something about her said wealthy widow. Too bad for Tony that his brownies were still in my walk-in refrigerator, along with the turkey curry. Reggie Hotchkiss, playing the part of casual cool rich guy, wore blue jeans and a shirt printed with a collage of the American flag. In my role as servant, I didn’t dare tell Reg that his apparel came off as unpatriotic But I couldn’t have enlightened him anyway, as Reg made a great point of giving me his back when I offered him the platter of focaccia wedges. La-de-da, I thought. So much for sympathizing with the proletariat.

I did feel sorry for Charles Braithwaite, however, who had either forgotten or not cared to dress in the national colors mandated by his wife. Well, I thought the dress code was a pretty corny idea too. Charles didn’t appear to have an opinion. With his long, lanky frame still completely clothed in khaki, he seemed oblivious. It was clear Charlie-baby would rather be in his greenhouse, or on safari with the French Foreign Legion—anywhere but here. By the time I reached him with the focaccia tray, he was slumped by a silk-draped corner window listening with a pained expression to Tony Royce’s date. She was complaining about how impossible it was to grow orchids indoors in Colorado. They just seem to know they’re not in a rain forest, she lamented. Charles groaned sadly, as if he’d give anything to be in the rain forest.

I whisked back out to the kitchen, added broth to the Arborio rice speckled with garlic and onion, stirred, and then helped Julian ladle chilled, chunky gazpacho into cold soup bowls. After sprinkling the soup with chopped scallions, I placed the bowls around the dining room table, then hustled back to the kitchen to add more broth to the risotto. I wiggled a spoon through the mixture, tossed homemade croutons for the salad in a mixture of olive oil and melted butter, stirred the risotto again, tossed the salad, and stirred more broth into the risotto. When Julian headed off to move the guests through the soup course, I stepped out on the deck to grill extra Portobello mushrooms and curse Tom Schulz. Forget the idea of making up over a romantic dinner. He’d have to pay for this little trick with a weekend at the Broadmoor.

In the fading light, the view of Aspen Meadow and the lake was even more spectacular than when we arrived. As the sun slipped rapidly behind the mountains to the west, a few rays backlit brilliant pink skeins of cloud. Darkness, and the fireworks, were just over ah hour away. I flipped the large mushroom caps and allowed my eyes to rest on the gently sloping acreage around the house. Two paths led from the house to the lower grounds. About a hundred yards down, Charles’s greenhouse was separated from a small garden filled with lawn chairs by a split rail fence twined with rosebushes. It was these, I surmised, that must have provided the blooms for Babs’s bedroom. Beyond the knoll, the roads coming into Aspen Meadow were already clogged with firework spectators from Denver.

Julian had cleared the soup bowls and finished arranging the salads when I returned with the mushrooms. He served the salads while I stirred the remaining ingredients into the steaming risotto. Plump shrimp were nestled invitingly between chunks of sherry-soaked Portobello mushrooms in the bed of luscious, creamy rice. Julian had steamed fresh broccoli to a bright green, and I artfully surrounded the risotto with the emerald-colored florets. Reggie Hotchkiss finally acknowledged my presence by giving me an angry, wide-eyed stare when I offered the platter. Of course, I was eager to tell him how much I disliked him, his procedures, and his silly outfit, but I kept my lips firmly sealed. When the guests had polished off the risotto and Julian had begun clearing the plates, I came out to the kitchen to get the fudge cookies. Unfortunately, Reggie Hotchkiss followed me.

I switched on the coffee urn and tried to ignore him as I reached for the cookie tin. I didn’t want to get upset on a festive occasion, especially a festive, lucrative occasion. Let the mood fit the food, we always say in the food business. But when Reggie marched up in his gaudy print shirt and edged between me and the dessert-plate platter, my mood turned decidedly dark.

“Would you please go back out to the dining room?” I said in a pained, sweet voice. I reached for the container of fudge cookies and arranged them decoratively on a separate piece of stoneware.

When I looked up, the brown hair around Reggie Hotchkiss’s bald spot was trembling. His thin, good-looking face was filled with rage. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you and your fascist-pig husband are doing investigating my place of business without a search warrant.”

I leaned back, startled. A temptation arose to use language that certainly would never get Goldilocks’ Catering invited back to the Braithwaites anytime soon. To keep my temper in check, I reached out for a fudge cookie, brought it to my mouth, and took a huge bite. The dark, velvety moistness melted over my tongue. I closed my eyes and chewed. It was better than a shot of tequila.

“Are you going to answer me,” Reggie yelled, “or are you going to stuff your face? What kind of damn caterer are you anyway?”

This eruption brought a furious, flushed Julian catapulting into the room. He slammed an uneven stack of plates down on the counter and hollered, “What in the fucking hell is going on out here?”

So much for future catering at the Braithwaites. I calmly swallowed the fudge cookie, squeezed past Reggie, and hoisted the platter of cookies. This I offered to Julian.

“Would you please,” I asked with as much charm as possible, “take these goodies out to the guests? Mr. Hotchkiss wants to have a chat with me, and we’re going to have to go outside, I’m afraid.”

But Julian didn’t take the tray. Instead, he addressed Reggie Hotchkiss: “You touch her, and I will beat your bald head to a pulp. Understand?” His sneakers squeaked on the tile floor as he grabbed the platter from me. “I’m going to be out on that deck in five minutes. Five minutes. Got it?”

Reggie Hotchkiss stared at the ceiling. He said, “Ah, but I do feel such a bond with the younger members of the working class.”

Julian glared at him in disbelief, then pushed through the door to the dining room.

“Come on, Reg, you want to talk, let’s make it snappy,” I said as I led the way to the side deck.

The sun had set, and the sky, now violet, promised a perfect backdrop for fireworks. I sighed and wished fervently that Reggie were not there. Unfortunately, he placed his imposing self with its red, white, and blue shirt once again in front of my face.

“First,” he said suddenly, holding up one index finger, “you call my place of business. You say”—and here he raised his voice to a falsetto that resembled nothing that had ever come out of my mouth—“‘oh, my, but I want to buy all kinds of stuff from your fall catalogue!’ Then next”—voice back down, a second finger up—“you make an appointment under false pretenses—”

I’d suddenly had enough. “Don’t you dare bully me,” I said evenly. “I made an appointment. I kept it. I even paid for a job that didn’t get finished. What’s your complaint, anyway? I’ve got work to do and you’re interrupting it.”

“Oh, I’m interrupting your work, oh, excuse me.” Reggie flailed his arms. “And what about all our new products that you wanted to order?”

“You mean all those products you stole from the fall line of Mignon Cosmetics? Those?”

His face colored in great red and white splotches that dashed with the loud shirt. “What?” he bellowed. “What?”

“Excuse me, Reg,” I said, furious myself now, “I think you know quite well what I’m talking about. I catered that banquet for Mignon. You were there too, spying in your cute blond wig. You got your list of what you figured would be money-making Mignon products and you just copied them into your fall catalogue. Anybody with half a brain could see the plagiarism.”

His face contorted with rage. Maybe I’d gone too far, maybe it took a full brain to figure the theft he’d committed. But he’d made me so angry with his accusations, I couldn’t help it. And besides, I hadn’t told him the cute blond wig had fallen on my head when I was escaping Lane, the needle-wielding facialist.

“You are in some kind of trouble,” Reggie warned in an ominous voice. This time the index finger trembled when he pointed. “You have just dug yourself into a hole so deep, you’ll never get out, lady. You—”

“Hey, you stupid fuck!” yelled Julian from the deck door. He strode angrily out onto the deck and squared off against Reggie’s patriotically clad paunch. “What’d I tell you about not threatening her?”

“I know who you are too,” Reggie raged at Julian, still wagging his finger. “You’re the low-class creep that Claire Satterfield had finally decided was her one and only. Lucky you, boy. She went from robbing the grave to robbing the cradle!” The colors in his face were decidedly unhealthy.