Vegas-style light display arranged in the shape of a covered wagon that appeared to roll from one end of the building toward the lake. But drunk wannabe cowboys exiting the saloon frequently thought the neon wagon was going to rollover them. Numerous car accidents had ensued. The sheriff’s department had ordered the light display turned off, and that had been curtains for the saloon.
I parked in front of Sam’s Soups, which had a For Lease sign in its darkened window. Food service in Aspen Meadow is always a touchy business, and Sam’s alternately gluey and thin soups had not been a local hit. Next door to Sam’s, Aspen Meadow Health Foods had held on, but only by going through a number of permutations. Up until a few months ago, my friend Elizabeth Miller had offered everything from twenty-pound bags of millet to gallon jugs of soy milk. Elizabeth had sold the store to Amy Bartholomew, R.N., late of the AstuteCare HMO and new purveyor of homeopathic remedies.
Only she wasn’t purveying at the moment. Amy’s paper clock sign indicated that she opened at eleven. It was barely ten. Not only that but Amy had scribbled “Most Days” on the clock’s center. Great. I glanced across the road at the LakeCenter.
“Mind if we drop by over there?” I asked Macguire, pointing at the LakeCenter. “I just want to see how they need me to set up for the breakfast Wednesday.”
“Sure.” He gave me a weary smile. “I’m not ready to go back to bed yet. I feel as if I spend my life between the sheets.” His face was cadaverous. Poor guy. I felt terrible that ReeAnn Collins had treated him so offhandedly. It’s difficult to take cruel treatment from a member of the opposite sex, especially from someone you care about. At nineteen, I’d been some kind of basket case myself when it came to relationships, and I hadn’t been struggling with mononucleosis and a flaky, egotistical father in the bargain.
“We’ll come back over here when the proprietor opens,” I promised. “You want to rest for a minute before we go talk to the Babsie Bash ladies?”
“Whatever,” Macguire repeated, apparently too tired to think of anything new to say. He stared glumly at the lake, a meadow of sparkles broken up by paddle-and sailboats. I wondered how Tom thought I’d be protected from the Jerk with poor, listless Macguire accompanying me. He’s out. I shivered. But I shook this off, the same way I always tried to rid myself of thoughts that included the Jerk.
Soon we were back in the van, rocking over din potholes, past the boundary of the municipal golf course, and into the wildflower-rimmed lot of the LakeCenter. After I parked, the two of us walked toward the large log building, where men and women with plastic-coated badges that said DEALER were carting boxes of wares inside.
“Gail?” I said when we approached.
Gail Rodine, in conversation with a uniformed man, lifted her chin in acknowledgment. Actually, her chin was about all I could see of Gail’s face. She sported a floppy-brimmed hat that sprouted feathers in every direction and might, I reflected, serve well as a centerpiece for the annual Audubon banquet.
Her mid-thigh-length dress was a glittering black-and-white-striped affair. Where did this woman get the money for her hobby? The LakeCenter was not a cheap space to rent, and I was not a cheap caterer to hire. The local Babsie club must get a cut of the profit made from the sale of dolls, and that percentage must be considerable.
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” she announced, and continued her low murmur with an older man in a gray security uniform that hugged his belly like a sausage casing. The man’s complexion was splotched, his nose was bright red, and his silver-gray hair lay in flat, greasy curls against his head. He punctuated every few sentences of Mrs. Rodine’s with a hiccup. He was not the sort of security guard to inspire confidence. Still, I stopped a respectful distance away from their conversation. Despite the fact that Arch had spent the night at the Rodines’ house, Gail and I did not move in the same social circles, as we both well knew. Wealthy folks are very conscious of service- sector people who are intrusive. Macguire held back another ten feet behind me. I think the memory of the women chasing him to the end of the dock two days before made him less anxious to be sociable.
Gail Rodine motioned me forward as she announced crisply to the guard: “And this is our caterer. She’ll be here to set up the box lunches tomorrow, and our breakfast on Wednesday just before nine o’clock.” She cocked an eyebrow at me, as if daring me to contradict her agenda. Actually, I needed to get in closer to eight on Wednesday. But before I could utter a word, Gail noticed Macguire. Her face stiffened with anger.
I tried to sound reassuring. “Gail, we’re just here today to check that the ovens are working and to see where you want the buffet to be. Plus, day after tomorrow, I need to get in closer to eight or eight-fifteen. Would that be okay?”
She lifted her chin, and I had a glimpse of a hooked nose and an auburn-lipsticked mouth with a cruel slant. “Eight will be fine. You said ‘we.’ Is this … person… your assistant? If so, you may come in now, he may not,” she proclaimed imperiously. “That boy has already made our lives quite difficult here. And we’re preparing to take our morning tea break. The break will be held in the same place as the brunch.”
“Okay,” I managed to choke. “Well, then.” She bristled impatiently. “Come and see what I’m talking about.”
Gail marched ahead of me down the path. Ordinarily, I adore my clients. They’re happy to book me. They enjoy planning the menu. They rave about the food I lovingly prepare. Ordinarily, things end happily, with future bookings in sight. But sometimes you can sense when things are going to go badly. Gail had been cruel to the kids at Arch’s slumber party; she’d been mean to Macguire when he’d merely tried to help. I’d just seen her give the security guy hell and I could feel that I was next in line, right before the tea break. I tried to wipe from my mind a sudden vision of Gail Rodine bobbing in a lake of Orange Pekoe, with her Babsie dolls tied around her neck. I suppressed a groan. Behind me, Macguire turned and shuffled back to the van.
I followed Gail past the bored-looking, slightly ripe-smelling guard ? after all, what kind of drinking stories could he get from protecting dolls? ? and into the kitchen. The large and serviceable space was as I remembered it: two ovens set against one wall, a sink overlooking the parking lot. Two lengthy counters separated the kitchen from the ballroom. These counters doubled as a snack bar in the winter months, during skating season, but would serve for me as a prep area. I checked that the ovens worked and looked briefly into the ballroom, where dealers were cracking open long tables and setting up tiers of empty shelves for their displays.
“In the morning,” Gail explained grandly over the bustle of dealers, “I want all the food out back. Nothing can touch the doll displays, remember. You can wheel the food trays out through here.”
She swished toward the wall beside the kitchen, then expertly opened a door in what looked like a solid block of logs. The door ? actually a rectangle of sawed logs that snugged into the wall ? gave out on the flagstone patio on the side of the structure. Gail moved outside. She briskly pointed out the grill for Wednesday’s final meal, the picnic tables on the deck overlooking the lake where dining would take place, and the tall doors between the ballroom and the deck.
“No dolls beyond this point, unless they have been purchased,” she said firmly. I smiled, nodded, and wondered how Macguire was doing. After promising Gail that I’d be back the next day with the box lunches, I zipped back to my van.
Macguire, chin in the air, mouth open, had fallen asleep with his head cocked against the neck rest. There was no way he could have been comfortable.
When the van jolted out of the dirt lot, he was stanled awake. He blinked, then muttered, “Uh, I’m ready to go home.”
“Just one more quick stop. I promised this nurse I’d be in to see her today. Plus I want to warn her about my ex-husband being released from custody. He mentioned her on the phone from jail. I should let her know he might show up.”
“Then I’d better go in with you,” Macguire said wearily. “If your ex has already gotten up here, you’ll need backup.”
We bumped back over the potholes, pulled into the Lakeview lot, and parked in front of the health-food store next to a Harley-Davidson. An Indian cowbell attached to the door gonged as we entered. Inside, ruffled green gingham curtains framed the windows. The pinewood-paneled walls were hung with pictures of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other dignitaries of the vegetarian world. The distinctive smell of exotic herbs and incense that permeates most health-food stores enveloped us.
Even though the store had only been open ten minutes, two people had preceded us. One was Patricia McCracken, whose pear-shaped body was stuffed into a white tennis dress that contrasted with the more exotic surroundings. She sat at a table with Amy Bartholomew. Amy sported a green-flowered Indian dress embedded with spangles. The other person in the store, a black-leather-clad burly man with shoulder-length, curly black hair,
