Prime Cut

“It’s up at the cabin where I’m catering tomorrow. Where Andre was working.” I did not add when he died.

My son’s eyes were solemn. “Do you think Chef Andre knew the code in the letter from prison?”

I remembered Andre gasping, staggering, looking triumphant and secretive when he read the letter. “Yeah, I do.” And he needed money, I added mentally; he’d complained about his wife’s bills and the cost of living in Aspen Meadow. The chance of finding a treasure isn’t something he would have told me about. Besides, he just didn’t know how much money, or how little, might be hidden out at the Smythe cabin. But he’d taken a crowbar with him to the cabin and tried to get behind the kitchen wall. And someone had discovered him, I was convinced.

“What about Leah Smythe?” Arch asked. “Do you think she read it and that’s why the flat fell on her?”

I let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know, Arch. Hon, don’t worry about it. Andre was getting on in years and had heart problems. I think a clamp came loose somehow and Leah was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” If I focused on the possibility of danger at a site, Arch would fret about my catering away from home. His fear would not be expressed in begging me to stay home, but only in pained looks and agonized questions: When will you be back? What if something goes wrong? In addition to all my other problems, I did not want to worry that Arch was anxious about my safety.

Arch had turned away to look at a butterfly perched on the deck railing. It was a monarch. The butterfly clapped its black-edged, dark orange wings slowly, soundlessly, before lifting from its perch and drifting down to die picnic table.

“It’s lost,” Arch announced. He pressed his lips together. “So. Do you want me to look at these two cookbook pages? I could see if I could cut it into plaintext to wrap around a skytale for you, if you want.”

“Sure.” I scrambled up. “That would be fun. Maybe you and Tom could do it together.”

“The two of you seem pretty excited,” Tom said when we came into the kitchen. “Why don’t you let me do these dishes? You guys go get an ice cream in town.”

“Forget the dishes,” I told him. “Arch has just figured out an interesting aspect of the Smythe history.”

I grabbed the pages of letters from the bread and pudding recipes in The Practical Cook Book, and began to make copies with my fax machine. Through the evening, Tom, Arch, and I photocopied, cut, and taped together strips. We made strips of the letters horizontally, vertically, and sideways. My kitchen began to look as if a confetti parade had marched through a bomb site. Finally we had several dozen strips constructed. While Tom pried open the garage wall and pulled out his Winchester ‘94,1 brought a sour cream coffee cake out of the freezer to defrost for the next day’s catering.

We took turns wrapping strips one way and the other around the rifle. It took us hours to assemble long and short lines of nonsense. Julian came home and joined us, asking questions, offering suggestions, sharing our excitement.

Finally, close to exhaustion and ready to concede defeat, Arch had the idea to make a strip from all the vertical rows of letters on the Parker House Rolls and the bread pudding pages, and wrap them around the rifle’s magazine, the ammunition-storage cylinder under the barrel. This gave him a very long string of letters, the longest yet.

“Hold on,” Arch ordered. The slippery fax paper scritched and slid across the gray metal of the gun as Arch nudged it into place. Then, triumphantly, he showed us Charlie’s message to his wife.

UNDER THE ELEPHANT ROCK.

Chapter 23

“Well, I am impressed.” Tom patted Arch on the back, and he beamed. “And I know that when Sylvia Bevans hears that Leah might loan her museum a stash that’s been buried for eighty-some years, even she will be ecstatic.”

Arch’s face fell. “You mean we don’t get to keep whatever’s there?”

Tom, Julian, and I laughed. I told him if there was anything there, it would belong to the robbery victims’ descendants, if any could be found. Arch asked if he could call Lettie to tell her the news. No way, Tom informed him, you can’t tell anybody. Disappointed, but still savoring the victory of breaking the codes, Arch retired to his room with Julian to play music. Listening to the muffled thud of rock-and-roll, I took a hot bath and thought about the painful events of the past eleven days.

“You know I’m going to have to report what Arch figured out,” Tom told me, joining me later in the bedroom.

He had taken a shower after my bath, and now rubbed his wet, sandy-colored hair with a towel. The room was luminous with moonlight. Outside, a breeze shuffled the pines. It was late, and I was bone-tired.

“Of course. But at the moment, no one knows except us.” I patted the clean sheets, made lustrous in the creamy light. “I have one day of catering left at the cabin.”

The bed creaked as Tom got in. He pulled me close. “Uh, Miss G.? You should cancel for tomorrow.” He kissed my ear and I shivered. “And if you must go, Boyd’s coming with you again, no argument. Somebody on that photo shoot could be, probably is, a killer.”

“Listen. I know something now. And what it is, I think, is the location of some very valuable jewelry, plus about five hundred dollars in cash, heisted from the last stagecoach to run in Yellowstone Park.” Tom’s embrace muddled my thinking, but I didn’t mind. “All hidden away,” I pressed on, “by a guy who was a signalman, a thief, and a rotten father.”

He kissed my neck. “You’re changing the subject.”

“Wait. You’re making it hard for me to think. What else I know is that someone is trying to sabotage my food. I need to figure out who it is, or face a risk whenever I do a booking.”

His hands touched the small of my back and I nuzzled against him. “Goldy, stop nosing around in old crimes. Just finish your job.”

“I might say the same for you, Mr. Contractor.”

He groaned. “Don’t joke.”

I kissed him. “I’m not.”

And then we made love, and for a While, I forgot all my problems, even my wrecked kitchen.

A brief rain shower swept in very early the next morning. When I looked out, the leaves on the neighborhood aspen trees sparkled and drooped with their weight of water. Freshly stretched from yoga, and dressed in my caterer’s uniform, I swallowed a few greedy breaths of cold, moist air before shutting the window.

Coffee break and lunch. I had the coffee break food ready to go—defrosted sour cream coffee cake, Cointreau French toast, strawberry and banana kabobs, cottage cheese mixed with mandarin oranges. For lunch, we would be serving an array of cold cuts and brioche. Julian had promised to make a soup and salad. We were also thawing some Blondes’ Blondies made earlier in the week, while I turned over ideas on how to catch a saboteur. In that department, I’d had a couple of thoughts during the night.

When I entered the cluttered, unfinished kitchen, Julian immediately handed me a hot espresso dosed with cream. I took the coffee with my usual gratitude. Through the trio of glittering new windows, I watched Jake and Scout cavort in the bloodhound version of cat-and-mouse. It was as if the move into colder weather brought out more energy in the animals: Have fun now, before two feet of snow prevent us from romping around. The delicious smell of baking puff pastry made me turn around.

“What are you making?” I asked Julian.

Snappily dressed in black with a white apron, his hair still damp from his shower, Julian gave me a quick grin, then went back to stirring. “Forget the soup. I’m heating the hors d’oeuvre from the wedding reception we’re not doing. And a crab dip.” His dark eyebrows knit as he cocked his head and studied my face. “What’s wrong? Andre’s memorial service got you down?”

“Yeah, a bit. Plus, the last day of a job, you always feel kind of sad.” Especially when you don’t know who’s dumping garbage in your food, how your teacher met his death, or why one of your clients was almost squashed by a falling flat.

Julian, less obsessed with crime and criminals, turned his attention back to the hot dip. “Just think of the check you’re going to get at the end. That’s what I always do. Our boxes are packed, by the way. As soon as the first batch of appetizers is done, I’ll cool it down and we can go.” I slugged down the espresso, picked up the first