Dark Tort

and our family friend Julian Teller are here. I…just thought you might not want to be alone.”

“I can’t.” Caint. “King Richard is bringing over some work for me to do here at my house. The cops won’t let us back into…back into…” She started crying again, then clearly made a huge effort to stop. “I’d like to see you.”

“You want to come to our house later?” I asked. “Say for dinner?”

Another sob. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling so good. I want to know why someone did this. Can’t you help the cops? Haven’t you done that before? What if somebody gets away with this crime?”

“I’m trying, Wink. Look, come over to our house when you finish your work, okay? Julian Teller will be here and can let you in.”

“Well, maybe.”

“You know how you were talking about my helping with the case, Wink?” When she mmm- hmmed, I made my voice firm. “I was hoping you could write down everything Dusty was working on.”

“I don’t know that stuff. That’s why they had her doing it.”

My stomach was growling, I was exhausted, and Wink was being Wink.

“Well, if you can think of anything, anything at all, we could go over it later.” That was about as far as I was going to get in one phone call, I reasoned. People want you to figure something out, but when you ask them to do some work in helping with the figuring, they get schizzy. We signed off.

“Hey,” I said, surveying the kitchen table, which Tom had carefully set with three place settings. “I just realized I’m starving.”

Tom beamed. Soon he and Julian and I were tucking into beds of crunchy greens, whose accents of sweet, crunchy fall beets and creamy, tart cheese were perfectly complemented by Tom’s sharp balsamic vinaigrette and the soft rolls he’d heated—with a pat of butter melting inside each one.

“So who were you on the phone with?” Julian asked, once we were washing the dishes.

“Wink Calhoun. Remember she took Latte off our hands when Scout kept attacking him?” Julian and Tom nodded, their faces grim. Our adopted cat had not taken well to the new, ultrafriendly basset hound, and had used his claws to show it. “She’s the receptionist at Hanrahan and Jule. Anyway, I invited her over here for dinner, hope that’s okay. She might be willing to talk to us about her best friend at that law firm, Dusty Routt.”

Tom’s cell rang and he moved into the hallway. When he came back, he asked if Julian would be staying at the house to cook. When Julian replied that he was, Tom said he was going down to the department. Before leaving, he gave me another hug and told me to call him if anything, anything at all, came up. I promised I would, and he took off.

Julian placed the printed-out recipes for Donald Ellis’s birthday party in a neat pile on the counter. “Where do you want to start?”

“Worst first,” I replied.

So. With the index card that Nora Ellis had given me for her husband’s birthday cake laid on the counter, Julian and I began placing the ingredients on our workspace: unsalted butter, apple cider, flour, spices.

“What, no eggs? Why isn’t there a real recipe?” Julian wondered aloud. “Are you just supposed to add things in order without a thought as to how they’re incorporated?” He stopped measuring sugar and stared at the list of ingredients. “This recipe doesn’t look right.”

I sighed, placed the butter in the mixer, and flipped the switch. “I know. The folks coming across the country in covered wagons didn’t have all our ingredients, and I know most recipes for Journey Cake don’t have eggs. But I’ve tasted Journey Cake, and it’s good. So you’re right. Something is wrong with Nora’s recipe, or rather, Charlie Baker’s recipe—”

“But Charlie Baker was a great cook,” Julian interjected. “I know he just listed ingredients on his paintings, but everything I’ve made from them has been great.”

“Ditto. Maybe I messed this thing up when I made it the first time. Plus, the recipe needs to be doubled to make enough for the party. My proportions could have been off.”

Julian stared at the mixer blades cutting swathes through the butter. “Are you sure this was one of Charlie’s recipes? Nora Ellis sure doesn’t cook, and she proudly informed me that her mother grew up with a cast of thousands. Thousands of servants, that is.”

“The cake is related to her present for Donald.” I picked up the wax paper cradling the sugar and allowed it to snow into the butter. “She’s giving him a painting by Charlie Baker. It was one of the last ones he did before he died. He gave it the name Cake Series II.”

Julian whistled. “That must have set her back a bit. Last I heard, Charlie’s paintings of food, with the ingredients lettered underneath, were worth fifty thousand each. And up. That’s a lot of cakes.”

“I know, I know. But I was happy for Charlie to make all that money, even if he had an awful short time to spend it. Once he got that diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, all the money in the country couldn’t help him.”

“Such a bummer,” Julian agreed.

“So I want to get his recipe right. This time, anyway.”

Julian nodded. I added half the dry ingredients to the sugar and butter, stirred carefully, poured in the cider, then tipped in the rest of the dry ingredients.

“Looks awful thick,” Julian mused.

“Like cement.” The biceps and triceps in my arms were nowhere near equal to the task, so Julian took over while I buttered the pan. “Sometimes coffee-cake batter is really thick,” I said hopefully. “Cookie batter, too, and both of them turn out moist and great.”

Julian scraped the batter into the pan and slid it into the oven. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.

“Oh God, Julian, I’m sorry. You want to go up and rest?”

“No, boss, it’s not that. It’s…It’s Dusty. I mean, I hadn’t seen her too much over the past couple of years— almost three years, I guess, since I started college. We broke up when she was…well, seventeen, I guess. But we always got along after that. I mean, we were friends. I just…imagined she’d always be there, you know?” He exhaled. “You really don’t think that kids you went to school with are going to be murdered.”

“I know.” I sat down beside him. “I’m sorry. Wink’s going to be a wreck, too.” Julian rubbed his face. “She and Dusty were such great buds. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now.”

“This is so bad.”

I murmured comfort while Julian ran his hands through his short, dark brown hair. Julian had first come into our lives with a bleached-blond Mohawk haircut, and an over-the-top hostile attitude. He’d gradually become an indispensable part of our family, inspiring Arch with his dedication to swimming and studying, inspiring me by being a genius in the kitchen, and gradually dropping his chip-on-the-shoulder to wrap all of us in a stubborn, bearlike affection. Yet like Arch, he now felt desolate and guilty.

I peeked in at the cake, which looked as if it was shrinking into a hard sponge. I muttered a curse under my breath. Julian looked in the oven and shook his head.

“Just make a regular butter cake,” Julian said. “Trust me, Goldy. Nora Ellis will never know the difference.”

“Yeah. But what if, one day, she decides she wants to cook? And if she tries to make Journey Cake and it flops, she’ll ask me why I didn’t use her recipe, and demand her money back.”

“She might ask for her money back, yeah, but she is much too tied up with shopping, manicures, and talking on the phone with her girlfriends ever to want to cook, or ever to bake a cake. Why is this recipe so important, anyway?”

“Because it’s on the painting. Have to say, now I’m really curious to know if Charlie screwed up this recipe, or if Nora did when she copied it down. But I don’t know where I’d get another recipe from Charlie Baker to test.”

Julian bit his lip, deep in thought. “Wait a sec. Don’t you remember when we did that fund-raising spaghetti party for the football uniforms at Arch’s new school? Turns out, Charlie Baker was an orphan who went to the Christian Brothers High School, back when it was an orphanage. He gave them a bunch of his paintings, and they’re hanging in one of the halls. Didn’t you see them? I just glanced at a couple on the way to the men’s room. What caught my eye was the one for Asparagus Quiche.”