Prime Cut

“We’ll be fine,” Wanda replied.

“Do you need food? Shopping done? Please tell me.”

“No.” Her voice was doubtful. “Not that I can think of.”

I went into the sitting room and knelt at Pru’s feet. She told the person on the phone to please hold for a moment, then reached out to touch my hair.

“It’s Goldy,” I said.

“Dear Goldy. Thank you for being with us. He loved you so much.” Tears streamed down Pru’s pale face. “He always bragged about you.”

“I’ll stay in touch,” I assured her. “Call me if you need help with the church, or anything else. Anything at all.”

Pru nodded and went back to her phone call. I checked through her lace curtains to make sure the road in front of her condominium was empty. There was no sign of unwelcome visitors. “I’ll call tomorrow,” I told Wanda Cooney, then left.

I piloted the Rover from the paved maze that wound through Blue Spruce Retirement Village onto the wide dirt road that ran past the complex. The dirt road leading to dense housing was not an uncommon sight in Colorado. A developer would buy acreage in a remote spot along a wide, unpaved road. At such remote locations, the county usually wouldn’t pave roads through residential areas, so the builder took on that task himself, naming his byways “Huntington Green” and “Foxhound Ridge,” as if his subdivision were an outpost of an English manor instead of dense housing in the middle of nowhere. Once the residents realized they were forty minutes from the nearest grocery store, and four times that long in a blizzard, they’d already bought in.

Rain drummed on the Rover roof. I passed a lumbering road grader and tried to ignore the emptiness gnawing my insides. Andre was now part of that group we ambiguously referred to as the departed. As my signal blinked to make the turn to Aspen Meadow, I cracked my window. Next to the state highway, the wind shuffled through a stand of aspens. A new blue-on-white metal sign swayed in front of the trees: FOR SALE—COMMERCIAL-ZONED LAND EIGHT MILES AHEAD! 200 ACRES! Great, I thought as I negotiated the turn. The Blue Spruce folks might get a snazzy grocery store yet.

A hunger headache loomed and I realized belatedly that it was almost four o’clock. I’d had a minimal breakfast and no lunch. When I’d left the morgue, Julian had been cleaning up salad detritus. Hardly appetizing, but the memory made my stomach growl. Funny how dealing with death does not remove the exigencies of life.

Cook, I decided. Go home and fix something that Andre would have made for you.

The mist of rain had lifted by the time I nosed the Rover into our driveway. Tom was making a show of feeding his roses; absurdly, I wondered if he’d found Craig Litchfield’s cigarette butt. By the look he gave me, I knew he’d been worried. I felt a pang of guilt: I’d turned off the cellular after calling Mountain Taxi.

“I swear, Goldy.” Tom dumped the last of a solution on a pink-blossomed rugosa. “You were gone so long, I couldn’t—” His shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry. Please. Come here.” I walked toward him and he held me in a very long hug. He smelled of laundry fresh from the dryer. “Are you all right?” I nodded into his shoulder. “How is Pru?”

“Not too bad,” I murmured, holding him tight. “Where are Arch and Julian?”

“Arch is at the Druckmans’. Julian’s cooking for your shindig tomorrow. I was so worried about you I couldn’t stay inside. Come on in,” he urged. “I’ve got something to show you.” He took my hand. Of course I assumed that Tom had been cooking, too. With no job to go to, he’d probably prepared a fudge meringue or tower of shrimp. But when we came into the kitchen, Julian merely glanced up and nodded. Then he went back to cutting a pan of polenta into diamond shapes. I scanned the room. It looked odd. Except for the polenta, there was no food. Come to think of it, there wasn’t even a back door.

“Oh my God, Tom,” I said, astonished. I glanced from the plastic-covered area over the sink on the side wall to large plastic sheets covering a huge, new gash in the back wall. Act grateful, some inner voice warned, but it was once again drowned out. “What have you done?” I murmured to Tom as I gaped at the hole in the wall. “Do you know what’s going to happen to me if the health inspector sees that? I’ll be closed down. I thought you weren’t going to … I mean, how could you … Tom!”

He dropped my hand. “I’ve been working all day on this. At least take a look. I’m going to take out the wall, too.”

I pointed to the area beside the place where, up until this morning, there had been a door. “That wall?”

“That’s where your new windows are going to go.” There was a tick of impatience in his reply.

A buzz filled my brain. “I thought we were just talking about this—”

“Look, Goldy, I am sorry—” Tom began. “But this is what you wanted—”

“I never said—”

“Uh, guys?” interrupted Julian as he rinsed his hands in the sink. “Goldy has, or we have, a big tasting party tomorrow? And we need to work on it. Or I need to work on it.” He dried his hands and then crossed his arms, uncertain. “Look, Goldy, I know I said this before, but you were a great pupil for Andre. He must have been very proud to be your teacher.”

“Thanks.”

Julian squinted at us and shifted from foot to foot. “I don’t mean to intrude with details, but do you just want me to do this party? I know it’s only for three people, at least, that’s what you told me. I can’t check because I can’t get into your computer anymore, unless you tell me the password—”

Tom held up his hands. “Julian, can you give us a few minutes?”

“Sure.” With his brow furrowed, he levered the polenta diamonds onto a waiting platter, tucked plastic wrap around the edges, and placed it in the walk-in refrigerator. He stripped off his apron. “Want me to go get Arch, pick up some food for dinner?”

“That would be great,” Tom replied warmly, as he pulled two twenties out of his pocket and handed them to Julian. My out-of-work husband, the money man, I thought bitterly. Julian picked up his wallet, keys, and a plastic container that looked as if it contained cookies. He pointed at the plastic-draped hole in my wall.

“May I go through that way, or will I screw something up?” he asked. Tom made a go-ahead gesture. With a rustle of plastic and quick-step across the deck, Julian was gone.

Tom sighed. “Let’s start over,” he said. A moment later, he carefully placed two crystal glasses of sherry on the table. “Please sit down.”

“Thanks.” I looked at the amber liquid without touching it. “I haven’t had any food, so this will probably go straight to my head.”

Tom opened the door to our walk-in refrigerator. In the door’s black reflection, my face looked drawn and angry. Tom brought out some cheese, then pulled a box of crackers from one of our few remaining cupboards. A moment later, he slid an offering of butter crackers and fat wedges of Brie to the center of the table.

“Eat something. Then we can talk about Andre. That is, if you want to.”

I stared at the crackers and cheese. “I had to identify the body.”

“I heard. I’m sorry, Goldy. Honestly, I am.” He leaned over and squeezed my hand. “And I’m sorry I sprang the kitchen stuff on you before you were ready. It’s just that I have to get started.”

“It’s okay.” I bit carefully into a crisp cracker topped with the creamy cheese. The sherry was like fire in my chest. Fire … I said, “Tom, there’s something that’s been bothering me all day. Andre had burn marks on his hands.”

“Burn marks? What kind of burn marks?”

“He wouldn’t have done that to himself,” I rushed on. “Plus, he went out to the cabin an hour early to do extra food prep, and that’s not like him, especially when the kitchen there is so small … and for him to die right after Gerald Eliot, and Cameron’s arrest … I mean, it’s all pretty weird….”

Tom’s eyes searched mine, which had again filled without warning. “Start over,” he told me solemnly. He scooted his chair over so he could rub my back.

The comfort of his warm, accepting presence made talk possible. I told him about the call from Sheila O’Connor, about going to the morgue, having the conversation with the cabdriver, who said Andre had gone to the cabin early. I told him about visiting Blue Spruce, dealing with the intrusions from Bobby Whitaker the Realtor and Craig Litchfield the caterer. I told him about poor Pru. Thinking about what Andre’s death had done to Pru’s world, a