Prime Cut

sound defensive, did I? Well, perhaps a tad.

“Off the Gerald Eliot case?” she huffed. “I thought he was just avoiding me. But his co-workers are accusing me of theft. Now they say I must have misplaced the last cookbooks, since I didn’t put them into the original report as missing, and the police are too incompetent to find them.”

“Did the police ask you about Cameron Burr?” I made room on the counter as Julian returned to the kitchen with an armload of dirty dishes, slid them into the sink, and started running hot water. “Do you know how Cameron’s doing?”

Sylvia needed no prompting. She shuddered and clinked her milky cup of coffee into the saucer. “Yes, of course they asked me about Cameron, and no, I don’t know how he’s doing. But the most important thing,” she announced, “was that the police know about Gerald. That he was a terrible guard. One time I came in early and found him here with a woman, for goodness sake! The police asked me what her name was! What? Did they think I came in and asked, ‘Whore? What is your Christian name?’” She sipped her coffee, lofted a pinky, and took a tiny bite of blondie. “I should have fired Gerald Eliot right then, but I didn’t have anybody else to hire, and Cameron Burr said Eliot needed the money.” She sighed gustily, delighted to have an audience for her tale of woe. “Would you like to see exactly where Gerald and his killer had their fight?” she asked with a trace of … what? Naughtiness? … in her voice. I nodded, and Andre eagerly replied that he would, too. Sylvia downed the last of her coffee and bustled out to the dining room, scooping up another blondie as she departed. Julian ignored us and kept washing dishes. I walked behind Andre and tried to look inconspicuous.

Except for Hanna, the Ian’s Images people were laughing, eating, and talking happily. Hanna was staring at the police ribbons and shaking her head.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have eaten in here,” Hanna said morosely.

Sylvia cleared her throat. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have come, Hanna, dear. You should just go back to your little department store job.”

Hanna shot us an enraged glare, then stalked across the room to have a whispered conference with Leah.

“The police say Gerald and Cameron struggled right next to the cabinets. The glass broke, then Cameron strangled him,” Sylvia said in a low, confidential tone to Andre. She pointed. “Here is where our historic cookbooks were displayed.”

Andre drew his mouth into a pucker. “Very sad.” He peered in at the shelves. “What are these letters, then?”

“We put all artifacts that were related to the cookbooks in the exhibit. Cameron and Barbara Burr donated the Watkins Cookbook and The White House Cookbook. The Practical Cook Book was donated by Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington.” She lifted an eyebrow in Leah’s direction. “American Cookery was donated by the German-American Foundation of Colorado. As you can see, Eliot’s murderer didn’t see fit to steal our letters, only our books.”

Suddenly, Andre gasped. He tried to inhale and reluctantly clutched his chest.

“Oh, dammit! What is it?” I cried as Andre wheezed. He staggered and I grabbed him. “Julian! Help me!”

“I am fine, I am fine!” Andre said over Sylvia Bevans’s squawking that someone needed to call an ambulance again. He recovered his composure and checked the alignment of buttons on his chefs jacket. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“By what?” I demanded.

His eyes had regained their mischievous look; he giggled.

“Goldy?” Julian’s worried voice was at my shoulder. “Want me to call nine-one-one on the cell?”

“Goldy! Stop fussing!” Andre said gaily as he trundled toward the kitchen with Sylvia walking importantly beside him, steadying him by the elbow. “If you want to help, pick up dirty dishes.” As if to demonstrate he was just fine, he began an a cappella rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

“I can’t believe you worked for that guy for a whole year,” Julian muttered in my ear. “I mean, you never know where he’s coming from. He nearly keels over, then he’s fine. Now he’s humming Christmas carols in August, for crying out loud. I want to finish the dishes and leave.”

I wanted to leave, too. Just clean up and then you can clear out, my inner voice commanded. I picked up dirty cups from an end table, then started toward the buffet. With the sudden disconcerting feeling that I was being watched, I stopped.

The models, their minions, the hair and makeup people, all had ambled back to the living room. But Ian Hood, Leah Smythe, Hanna Klapper, and Rufus Driggle stood at the entryway to the dining room. Hanna glared at the area where Andre had had his second miniattack, then shifted her reproachful eyes to me. Rufus moved from foot to foot, as if he, like me, wanted to clear out. Leah and Ian conferred, then shook their heads, as if I’d said something incredibly stupid. Confused, I felt suddenly embarrassed to be clutching a nest of empty cups.

“Goldy!” Hanna exclaimed. The authoritarian tone of the former director of docente still had the power to freeze my spine. “What just happened?”

“Andre just wanted to see the crime scene,” I commented lightly as I rebalanced the cups. “He’s fine! Don’t worry.”

Not one of them said a word.

Chapter 10

Finally Leah blinked, as if she were coming out of a reverie. She raked her streaked, shaggy hair with her fingers. “Well, fine. We’re done for today. Please tell Sylvia I’ll see her on Tuesday. And you and Andre too, I guess.”

I nodded. Hanna closed her eyes rather than look at the violated cabinets, somehow managing to convey her conviction that neither the burglary nor the murder would ever have happened if she’d still been in charge at the museum. Ian gruffly ordered Rufus to start packing up the lights and the set. I hustled my tray to the kitchen and asked Andre how he was feeling. He again assured me he was fine. As if to prove it, he delicately placed plates into the tublike porcelain sink that Julian had filled with soapy water. Sylvia, once so desirous of our company and our coffee, now did her best to shoo us off.

“How much longer will this cleaning take? I need to bring the fourth graders out here!” she fussed. As is common when someone bothers the catering crew in the kitchen, her presence actually slowed down our cleaning process. But none of us dared point that out, and she finally trundled off.

“Can we help with Monday’s food?” I asked Andre as Julian dried the last of Andre’s pans and I packed them up. “We have another assignment, but we could meet you early … please?” I’d never forgive myself if the stress of Monday’s food preparation proved to be too much for him.

“No,” he insisted stubbornly. “You make me so nervous, Goldy! You do not need to watch me all the time. For Monday, I will do a very simple coffee break and lunch.”

“Promise to call and tell me how things went,” I urged, as Mountain Taxi pulled up for him. Among his many reluctances to compromise with the times, Andre had never learned to drive. Julian and I loaded up the cab’s trunk. Andre clambered in and swore he’d stay in touch.

When we reached home, Arch solemnly assured us that Jake was on the mend. The two of them had even gone for a very short walk. To my surprise, Tom had finally taken a break from his mysterious woodworking project to fire up the grill. I was very curious to know what he was up to in the basement, but I had no intention of asking if all the banging was yielding anything beyond ventilation to his frustrations. For my own part, I’d once decided in a fit of pique to construct a gingerbread version of McNichols Arena; halfway through, the walls had collapsed. Therapy projects, I’d concluded, are usually best left undiscussed.

I set the table for lunch and noticed our checkbook jammed up beside a stack of glasses on the kitchen counter. Maybe my husband had taken a close look at our finances and that was leading him to pound nails into two-by-fours. Without looking at the check register, I knew that even with the pay from Andre, only two thousand dollars and change separated us from the morass known as negative cash flow. And two thousand wasn’t much when sixteen hundred of it represented payments for my two upcoming jobs, and would have to cover the costs of food and labor for those events. Moreover, two thousand was