Dark Tort

“Oh, man, now I’m really curious. Let me phone the school.”

I put in a call to CBHS, where an obliging secretary said they were asked for Charlie’s recipes all the time. They’d put together a leaflet that they sold for five bucks—payable to the Football Boosters—to anyone who wanted one. I asked the secretary about the quiche, and if she’d heard of Charlie’s Cake Series. Maybe I or II? She had no idea what I was talking about.

“But we’d be very happy to sell you a booklet,” she sang out. “We keep them in with his paintings, so people can see the real thing if they want. We had to move them out of the hallway,” she said, her voice suddenly morose. “They got too valuable to keep them hanging between the lockers.”

I thanked her, hung up, and stared at Nora’s card again. “I still think Nora could have copied it down wrong. Perhaps Charlie was getting addled toward the end of his life.”

Julian shrugged. “It’s more likely Nora screwed it up. If the CBHS secretary doesn’t know about Charlie’s cake recipes, then let’s just make ‘Old Reliable.’”

“That’s a possibility. What would I do without you, Julian?”

“Fall apart,” Julian muttered, but then he smiled as he removed the hard disk of fallen cake from the oven.

I was taking out more butter and eggs when the doorbell rang. When I looked through the security peephole, I saw Nora Ellis, tall, blond, and blue-eyed, looking perfect in a herringbone blazer and black pants, standing next to Ookie Claggett, wife of Alonzo Claggett, aka Claggs. Ookie, a muscled, short-haired brunette, was always dressed for squash. Today, despite the fact that it was now October, she wore white shorts and a white T-shirt with the logo of Aspen Meadow Country Club. She was even carrying a squash racket, which she lofted and waved at the peephole.

My heart vibrated in my chest as I opened the door.

“You need help?” Julian yelped from the kitchen.

“No, thanks.”

“Hi there,” I said as I slid out onto the front porch. I certainly did not want to precipitate another conflict between Julian and Nora Ellis. “We’re working inside,” I stammered, “so things are a mess and I can’t…well, you two probably heard about the…death at H&J this morning.”

“Oh, heavens,” said Ookie, tapping her racket on her thigh. “We did. That poor girl.”

I couldn’t interpret her tone. According to Marla, who kept track of such things, Nora Ellis and Ookie Claggett had a love-hate, gossipdependent, ultracompetitive friendship. I addressed Nora. “Under the circumstances, Mrs. Ellis, Nora, I…didn’t think you’d want to go ahead with—”

“My husband’s birthday party?” Her voice was querulous as she brushed the curtain of platinum hair back from her fine-featured face. “Well, I don’t know what to do, actually. He’s a mess. Everyone at the firm is.”

“Well, um, you might want to ask him about the party. It’s possible he’ll think it…wouldn’t work.”

“I know,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go ahead with it. Still, I think everyone desperately needs cheering up.” She hesitated. “Were you able to make the cake?” she asked.

“I’m working on it right now. Actually, just double-checking here, but do you still happen to have that list of ingredients?”

“Why, yes,” said Nora, surprised. While Ookie sighed and rolled her eyes and indicated this was a huge waste of her time, Nora dug around in her Prada bag until she found an index card. “Do you want to just take this?” she asked.

“No, I’ll copy it, thanks.” I excused myself, wiggled back through the front door, and returned with my own index card and a pen. Nora proceeded to read me the exact list of ingredients we’d already used. “Are you set now?”

“Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

“All right, then, I will check with Donald,” she said as she and Ookie turned to go. After a moment, she added, “Everyone is going to be so upset, if we do go forward. Maybe you need some help.”

“No, thanks, I’m fine—” I began.

She lifted her chin and shook her blond hair in a gesture of impatience. “Tell you what. If Donald is okay with us having the party, then we’ll do it.”

“Uh, when you make a decision, I just need to know as soon as—”

But Nora and Ookie were already walking toward a black Hummer.

When I returned to the kitchen, I slapped my index card on the counter and told Julian the content of my conversation with the two associates’ wives. He raised his eyebrows, as in I told you so.

I eyed the shrunken Frisbee of cake, then checked my new index card with its list. The ingredients were the same. “To hell with Nora’s cake. Let’s whip up Old Reliable.”

“That’s the spirit.” Julian began creaming the butter while I assembled the dry ingredients. During my years at boarding school, Old Reliable had been a staple of our bake sales. To buy new sticks for the field-hockey team or fund a field trip to Chancellorsville, the day students would bring in platters of cookies and cakes that we boarding students would then slice and sell after lunch. I had a vivid memory of girls carrying paper napkins topped with huge slices of tender yellow cake that had been slathered with chocolate buttercream icing. Those Southerners knew how to cook, I’d give them that. Maybe our school bake sales weren’t on the level of some of the fancy fund-raisers we did at St. Luke’s Episcopal, but the principle of “You Can Eat Blamelessly if You’re Raising Money” was identical.

If we did indeed cater Donald Ellis’s birthday party, I would need to double the ingredients, I realized, as I printed out my old recipe. I worked the math and wrote up the proportions, then handed the paper to Julian to make sure I’d done it right. He recalculated the ingredients and found I’d only failed to double the baking powder. Agh!

“You’re distracted,” Julian said encouragingly. “I can’t believe you’re trying to…well, I can believe it, given everything you’ve told me about that law firm. Let’s boogie on this cake so you can pick up Arch and Gus on time.”

I sifted the dry ingredients, then creamed the sugar into the butter while Julian separated eight eggs. Julian rarely complained, and he took to his tasks with determination, eyeing each yolk and white carefully to make sure none of one mixed in with the other. Working with him in the kitchen was like skiing with someone you’ve known forever. He goes one way, you go the other, and no one skis over anyone’s toes.

We put the cake pans into the oven and observed the batter’s progress through the glass, as anxious as parents watching their own kid ski down a slope for the first time. But the cake rose beautifully, and emerged puffed and golden.

After we’d placed the pans on racks to cool, Julian frowned at Charlie’s cake recipe, or rather his recipe for cake failure.

“It really was not like Charlie to do this incorrectly,” Julian said, his voice stubborn.

“Well, let it go for now. Julian? Sally Routt has asked me to look into Dusty’s death. Just tell me, how did Dusty seem to you, when you were going to school together? I mean, was she friendly, standoffish, smart, not so smart, what?”

Julian turned, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms. After a moment, he said, “She was smart, yeah. I mean, Elk Park Prep gave her a full ride, until everything fell apart.”

“We’re talking about before the Routts moved in across the street.”

“Yeah.”

Julian pointed to the espresso machine and raised his eyebrows, as in How many shots? I thought, To hell with my doctor, and said, “A couple. With some cream, if you don’t mind. Thanks. Whenever I do get to bed, I’m going to sleep no matter what.”

Julian’s sneakers squeaked as he moved quickly around the kitchen to fetch demitasse cups, whipping cream, and to refill our bowl of sugar, which he had emptied. He pulled the shots, doused mine with cream, and placed the cups on the kitchen table. I sat down and, as usual, averted my eyes as he proceeded to ladle obscene amounts of sugar into his coffee. Why did he have such perfect teeth? I wondered.