Spruce Medical, but she said people make mistakes all the time, and I should just cool it.”
Gus sighed dramatically. “Don’t we live in a litigious society? That’s what my grandparents say. I had no idea what that meant, so I looked up ‘
Arch said, “Will you guys quit yakking and get out the butter and the maple syrup? They’re both in the walk-in refrigerator.”
When Marla arrived, Arch, Todd, and Gus had polished off seconds in the pancake department, and I was just starting on my own. They were delicious: Arch whizzed cottage cheese in the blender to add to the batter, and this gave them a nubbly texture, a modicum of protein, and a tangy taste that people invariably asked about. By the time I started on my second stack, my mood had improved considerably.
“Ooh, flapjacks!” Marla cooed as she admired the table. “Are these from Arch’s extra-special recipe?”
Arch blushed but said they were, and he’d made lots of batter, and would Marla like some?
“You bet.” Marla put her hands on her hips, which were swathed in an ample burnt orange and lime green Marimekko shift. When she wiggled, I noticed she was wearing large dangly lime green earrings. She looked like a big orange tulip. “I’ve already had lunch, so this will count as my dessert, I guess. Maybe I’ll have to break down and visit Gold Gulch Spa one of these days, eh?”
While Arch was frying Marla’s “dessert,” Todd and Gus did their dishes, then told Arch they were going out to the Passat to get their stuff. Meanwhile, I gave Marla an abbreviated version of that morning’s trip up to Gold Gulch.
“Smooching with Smoothie?” Marla asked. “Sounds like a horror novel.”
“It wasn’t Smooching with Smoothie—”
“Oh, don’t get technical.” She shoveled in the last bite of pancake. “That was great. You know that T-shirt,
“Marla, I have to make sure I really do have enough crab cakes, even if Billie adds another fifty people to her hundred and fifty guests—”
“So, make your sauce gribiche, then keep going on the crab cakes, give me the first one to taste, and I’ll tell you whether it has too much salt, that kind of thing.”
“I try to put in somewhat less salt than a dish might need, then—”
“There you go getting technical again. You want to hear my news or not? You’re going to like it. The first part has to do with Doc Finn and your godfather. The second is incredibly juicy, and has to do with this wedding you’re doing tomorrow.”
I hauled out industrial-size jars of mayonnaise, bulbs of fresh garlic, and other things I would chop to go into the sauce.
“Uh,” I said to Marla, with her dubious cardiac history, “maybe you shouldn’t be having this.”
Marla tsked. “Okay, remember I was having that fund-raiser for the church at my place last night?”
“How could I forget? It was just dessert, right?”
“Oh, hell no. Well, actually, I thought it was just dessert, but then somebody called and said did I remember it was snacks and dessert? Think, light dinner, heavy dessert. I don’t know. And I cursed and said I didn’t have any snacks, and she said to just put out what I had. Well, I didn’t have enough wine to serve thirty people, and I did have cheese for an appetizer, but I didn’t have more than twenty crackers, that’ll teach me. But! I did have a case of hundred and ten proof vodka, which I could serve either neat or as martinis. Plus, I had lots of olives. Nut-stuffed olives, pimento-stuffed olives, kalamata olives, you name it. And when people haven’t had dinner but only have olives and vodka? You get great gossip.”
“I hope nobody was driving.”
“No, Goldy, they all walked to my house and then stumbled home. For crying out loud! One of the perks of this little event is that I had the car service again, in case people needed to be ferried to and fro. I’d forgotten the wine and appetizers, but I’d remembered the cars. You can’t have everything.”
“Marla—”
She heaved a voluminous sigh. “Are you going to let me tell my story or not?” When I said nothing, she went on, “You know Lucas Carmichael?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Marla’s ears perked up. “Why unfortunately?”
I tried to make myself sound nonchalant. “He just doesn’t like me.”
Marla cocked a knowing eyebrow. “He’s jealous of how much love, attention, and money Jack’s lavished on you.”
I sighed. “’Fraid so.”
“Well. You know Lucas’s ex-wife Paula is an attorney?”
“Yeah. Down in Denver?”
“Yup.”
“Then why was she at—?”
Marla held up her hand. “Paula has kept her membership at St. Luke’s, which was the reason she was at the fund-raising shindig. She even told me it’s her way of keeping tabs on wealthy potential clients. After three martinis and only a couple of olives, what Paula also told me is that she’s still unbelievably pissed at having to pay spousal support to mousey little Lucas. But if she has to dish out dough, she can also dish dirt, eh? And check this out: now she does prenuptial agreements exclusively. She didn’t do one for herself, but now, oh, man! The irony!”
I couldn’t imagine where this was going, but I’d already been bawled out enough by Marla for interrupting that I just printed out my recipe for the crab cakes, and began spooning mayonnaise into glass measuring cups.
“Yesterday, Paula had a hard day in the trenches trying to keep money away from grasping potential spouses,” Marla went on. “Or at least so she said. I’m telling you, she kept slinging back dirty vodka martinis so fast, she was like the Before poster for Alcoholics Anonymous. I even told her to take it easy, and you know I never do that. She laughed and said she wanted to get her money’s worth, five hundred dollars a person for new cabinets for the church kitchen? And no dinner for the donors? Well, she was pissed, in every sense of the word.”
“Marla—”
“I’m getting there, Goldy, hold on to your gearshift. Okay, you know how we ex-wives occasionally are weak enough to sleep with our ex-husbands?”
“Not among my finest moments after kicking out the Jerk,” I admitted.
“Nor mine,” Marla agreed. “But anyway, Lucas and Paula got all intimate a couple of weeks ago, and Lucas confided that he’d been hoping Paula would not be having to pay alimony to him much longer.”
“He’d been hoping?”
“Yup.” Marla raised an eyebrow. “He’d asked Jack if he could have his inheritance, or part of it, early. But Jack said no. It seems Lucas was quite bitter, in spite of just having scored free sex.”
“Nice talk. Good thing Arch is out of earshot.”
Marla waved this away. “Anyway, according to Paula, your dear godfather Jack had not only told Lucas he couldn’t have any money now, Jack was also thinking of changing his will completely. Changing it, that is, so that Lucas was cut out, I should add. And the proponent of the change, according to Lucas? Dr. Harold Finn.”
“Doc Finn?”
“One and the same. Doc Finn went to Duke University Medical School, and apparently he’d convinced Jack to stop in Durham after one of their drinking-and-fishing trips back East.”
“I knew this,” I said. “Jack told me about the trip, that he almost got eaten alive by mosquitoes.”
“Did he tell you the med school wined and dined him? Did he tell you the powers that be promised him that if he donated twenty million to the school, they’d name a building after him?”
“No. But I’m not sure I believe all this, or even any of it. There’s no way Jack has twenty million dollars. Jack and Lucas don’t always get along, and this sounds like some joke Jack is playing on his son.”
“You think?” Marla looked around the kitchen. “Any chance of some espresso? If I’m going to think, I need some. I might have had one or two too many martinis myself. Plus, I’ve got such a damn headache, my cranium feels as if it’s been splitting rocks all night.”
Shaking my head, I dutifully fixed my friend a double espresso. I knew Jack had enough money to live comfortably. But I simply could not believe he had twenty million smackers squirreled away somewhere. Otherwise,
