Prime Cut

sizes, old wooden spoons. Only one item was missing: Andre’s salamander.

Although Andre had never used the bottom compartment for tools—he liked having his tools out where he could see them—I lifted the top layer just to see if I’d missed something. The spoons clanked and the metal layer scraped the sides of the box as I heaved the compartment free. When it was finally out, I gaped, uncomprehending, into the bottom of the box.

There was what I sought: Andre’s salamander. But next to it was a tool I’d certainly never seen Andre use in a kitchen: a crowbar.

Chapter 22

What to do? My thoughts raced. I did a double-check of all the tools; nothing else was unusual or out of place. The water stopped. I hastily closed the box, slid it back into place, shut the closet door, and descended the stairs on tiptoe. Pru slumbered on. I poured two cups of ultrastrong room-temperature tea and slugged one down. When Wanda reappeared, I motioned toward Pru and then whispered that I would find my way out.

I sprinted to the van and drove back to our house. Tom and the boys were not yet back from the reception. Hunger knotted my stomach. Cook, I told myself. That will help you figure this out.

Cook? I surveyed the buckled rectangles of plywood that covered two thirds of the counter area; the rest was just gaping holes revealing cabinet drawers. The new floor, still unfinished, looked like it belonged in a barn. I did not have the foggiest idea where my recipes were, but I knew Arch well enough to predict that no matter how much food they had at the reception, he would want dinner. Not because he was hungry, but because the comfort of order, including meals served at regular times, had been one of the ways he’d restructured his universe after our family life had first fallen apart. So I decided to make Slumber Party Potatoes, his favorite.

Within ten minutes, I had started bacon cooking, scrubbed four potatoes in the main-floor bathroom, shuttled them along with washed broccoli out to the kitchen, and placed them in the oven. I trimmed the broccoli stems and set them in a small amount of boiling water just as the thick slices of bacon began bubbling in my saute pan. Despite a messed-up kitchen, despite Craig Litchfield’s attempts to undermine my business, I still loved to cook.

Craig Litchfield. He’d shown up in the most unlikely places, including at Andre’s house the day he died. I knew he was a smarmy competitor, but was he engaged in something even more sinister than stealing clients? Someone was sabotaging my food up at the cabin. I was fairly certain the same vindictive prank had been played on Andre. Could the prankster be Craig Litchfield? Could Litchfield have been so insane as to get through the locked gate, or climb the fence of the Merciful Migrations property, to try to harm a competitor? Or could he have hired someone to do it? And could that person have meant merely to scare Andre and gone too far? I couldn’t believe that Craig Litchfield would be willing to take a homicide rap, but then again, as I’d learned so often with The Jerk, some folks won’t hesitate to use violence in order to get their way.

I turned the sputtering bacon slices. Fat popped in the pan, and a tiny, stinging droplet spattered my forearm. I frowned and rubbed the spot. That first morning we had worked together at the cabin, Andre had given me such meticulous instructions in caramelizing—“burning sugar”—for that day’s dessert. He was always careful in the kitchen, citing tales of cooks who had sliced fingers or burned their hands or faces. He’d warned me repeatedly about burns. So, on the morning he died, I’d say the chances he had burned himself with his own salamander were slim, unless he had had cardiac symptoms while he was doing the caramelizing.

I finished flipping the bacon and turned down the heat. So the burns on his hands still bothered me. What else? The fact that he was even preparing more creme brulees that day was a puzzle. Andre always brought backup food. So why would he have been making still more creme brulees in the kitchen? Had he come to the cabin to prep the fruit, and then been told he needed to make a lot more custards? Who could have delivered this message, and when? Had that same person interrupted Andre as he was making the cremes? Maybe even seen him using the fiery-hot salamander? And why had Andre, or someone else, hidden or stored the salamander and a crowbar in his toolbox? Had the crowbar been used as a weapon, or for something else?

I turned off the heat under the broccoli and tried to envision Andre that last morning. Maybe he’d been working in the kitchen and heard somebody in the great room. Could he have seen someone tinkering with the flat that so nearly crushed Leah? Maybe he’d seen or heard something, picked up a crowbar, tiptoed out to the great room, and … And what? And tried to hurt somebody with it? What about the hot salamander? And the nitroglycerin? Were the slight bruises in his mouth nothing, as the coroner seemed to think? Or had someone forced him to swallow the pills?

I drained the fragrant, sputtering bacon slices and the bright green steamed broccoli florets, and tried to construct a different scenario. What if Andre had brought the crowbar with him, in order to try to find something? That would surely explain why he’d come early, with all the food made in advance. But what would he have been seeking? Andre had never seen the letter hidden in the old wall, the letter which had pointed toward using Winnie’s stolen cookbook to make rolls. To find treasure. He had never shown the least interest in either American history or weapons, and it seemed highly unlikely he had any regard for Charlie Smythe’s old rifle. But he had had some glimmer of what was going on when he’d asked for a photocopy of Winnie Smythe’s cookbook. Why? What made the cookbook so important? If Andre had known something—something Gerald Eliot had known, too—what could it have been?

Slumber Party Potatoes

4 large baking potatoes

2 tablespoons (? stick) butter

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon chicken broth granules

1? cups milk

1 cup grated Cheddar cheese

1 pound fresh broccoli, trimmed of stems and separated into florets, lightly steamed

1 pound thick-sliced bacon, cooked until crisp, drained, and chopped

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Scrub and prick the potatoes in 3 or places with a fork. Bake them for about 1 hour, or until flaky.

While the potatoes are baking, melt the butter in a large skillet over low heat. Stir in the flour; cook and stir just until the flour bubbles, 2 or 3 minutes. Add the chicken broth granules, stir, and then gently whisk in the milk. Heat and stir constantly over medium heat until the sauce thickens, about 10 minutes. Add the cheese and stir until it melts, 2 or 3 minutes.

Split each of the hot potatoes in half and place them on a platter. Place the steamed broccoli florets and chopped bacon into bowls. Pour the cheese sauce into a large gravy boat. Diners serve themselves assemblyline style, ending with the cheese sauce.

Makes 4 to 8 servings

I cut a stick of butter in half and set it to melt in another pan for the cheese sauce. Had there been a tidbit of gossip Andre was waiting to share with me—something that had made someone on the set dislike Leah enough to try to kill her? I turned that over in my mind for a moment, and discarded it. Any gossip he had, he would have told me instantly as soon as the paramedics left on Friday, when we worked together. That day, instead, he’d clucked sympathetically to Sylvia’s tale of woe about the robbery. He’d talked to Julian about his work with the Resistance during the war, and helped us prepare and serve the coffee break goodies. What else? Andre had gasped later in the morning. I’d thought he was having another attack. But he hadn’t been.

I quickly grated a heap of Cheddar cheese. What had immediately preceded this appearance of a seizure at the museum? He’d been staring with a disconcerting intensity at the smashed cupboard which had held the missing cookbooks. What else? He had read Charlie Smythe’s letter to Winnie from Leavenworth. So what?