low-fat food.
Other than all that, I thought as I stretched into my last asana, everything was, as we say in food service, peachy.
I took a quick shower and crept down to the kitchen, where I filled an insulated mug with ice, splashed in a goodly dose of whipping cream, and pulled four shots of espresso for a volcanic Summertime Special. I took a long swig, then shuddered when I thought of the menus Yolanda had e-mailed me for that day. For dessert, the clients were getting canned fruit with low-cal whipped topping. That didn’t sound too healthful to me.
When I’d loaded the cooking equipment I couldn’t live without into the van, my eye snagged on the facade of Jack’s Victorian. The unfinished front porch, with its higgledy-piggledy assortment of flowerpots, made the place look even more forlorn. I looked away, down at the Grizzly Saloon, where an early morning worker was sweeping the porch. By half past ten, the place would be filled with patrons—usually men, sad to say—who couldn’t get through the day without booze, and plenty of it.
I gunned the engine: time to get out to Gold Gulch Spa. Even if Tom thought I was nuts, I knew what I wanted to do: find out why someone had killed Doc Finn. He’d been investigating something. Then Jack had searched the Smoothie Cabin. Maybe Doc Finn and/or Jack had found what they were looking for, and were threatening to go public with it.
If either one or both of them had gathered evidence proving some kind of wrongdoing, then that would be it —finito, fin, the end—for the spa.
If the whistleblower had been Doc Finn, then the note in his trash reading “Have analyzed” could be the key. Had Doc Finn taken a sample from the spa…from the Smoothie Cabin…and put it into a vial? And had he received the news back as to what was in the vial? Had he confronted Victor, and if so, had the old doctor been lethally punished for his efforts?
And how did Billie Attenborough, now Billie Miller, play into this, if at all? She and Doc Finn, whom she had already professed to hate, had been having a large, loud argument out at Gold Gulch Spa right before he was killed. Billie had said Doc Finn had told her she shouldn’t try to lose weight so quickly. I still didn’t believe this. I couldn’t remember when Craig Miller had said he and Billie would be leaving for the Greek Isles for their honeymoon…I just recalled how much I wanted them to be on it, instead of hanging around Aspen Meadow.
I also wanted to know what the hell Charlotte was up to. To my mind, she hadn’t really explained what her shoes were doing in Doc Finn’s Porsche.
Was my theory about Victor possibly having it in for Doc Finn and/or Jack likely or unlikely? What was Lucas up to, if anything? Where did Charlotte, Billie, and her new husband fit in, if at all?
I pressed my lips together and wound up Upper Cottonwood Creek Road on the way to Gold Gulch Spa. No question, it would pay to be extremely vigilant.
My cell phone rang, startling me out of my reverie.
“Okay, boss,” came Julian’s crackling voice, “I’m on the interstate and Sergeant Boyd is right behind me. He said to call you and tell you not to drive into the spa until we catch up. Tom’s orders.”
“Well,” I said with a nervous laugh, “make it snappy.” I glanced at the car clock: half past five.
“I would,” replied Julian, “but remember, Boyd’s a cop, and he’s driving like a cop. Right behind me. Slowly.”
“Is he in a police car?”
“No, but I have a feeling that if I go twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, he’ll get out the handcuffs.”
TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the five of us—Boyd, Julian, Yolanda’s two female assistants, and yours truly— were madly scrambling eggs, toasting whole wheat bread, and swirling soft tofu with spring water, to mix into oatmeal. The two breakfast servers were filling the skim milk and decaf coffee machines.
“I thought you said this was a high-class place,” Boyd commented as he peered into the walk-in refrigerator. “I’m not seeing any expensive low-fat breakfast meat in here. In fact, I’m not seeing any kind of breakfast meat in here.”
“Better for your arteries, Mr. Policeman,” Julian commented.
“Yeah?” said Boyd. “Kiss my ass, Mr. Vegetarian.”
“Boys, boys,” I scolded gently, “this is no place for a food fight, even a verbal one.”
But the two of them were already racing around the kitchen’s big island like a couple of kids. Julian snapped a dish towel at Boyd. Boyd snatched a wet pot scrubber and hurled it at Julian. The two kitchen assistants began giggling as the fight escalated to Boyd and Julian swinging kitchen implements at each other. The assistants’ laughter reached hyena levels. While the two guys banged around and yelled taunts, I prayed that Victor Lane was far away. I also began to wonder where the seven thousand dollars a week that each client paid to visit Gold Gulch went. The kitchen did not hold a single piece of fresh fruit, and only the most desultory collection of fresh vegetables. Frozen chickens, thawing for to night’s broiling and tomorrow’s lunch, had been bought in bulk, as had the pork tenderloins that I was fixing for the next night’s dinner. Why would Yolanda put up with preparing such foods, instead of insisting on high-quality, fresh ingredients? She must really need this paycheck. I frowned.
Of course, there was no way I was going to tell Victor Lane how to run his spa. Still, when I’d started out in catering, it had taken me a while to figure out how to calculate what exactly I had to charge to make a profit in food service, and Victor, I was sure, had done the same thing. The basic rule of thumb was that you took your raw ingredients and tripled them. As far as I could figure, Victor Lane was paying less than two bucks a day per person for his raw materials. So if the clients were paying a thousand dollars a day for food, shelter, and exercise, I wondered how much the shelter, cleaning, and exercise classes cost.
Charlotte had told me Gold Gulch was almost always full, with a waiting list, even year-round. Victor must be making a killing. But if that was true, then why was he trying to convince Marla, Lucas, and Charlotte to invest in Gold Gulch?
While I was wondering about all this, Boyd and Julian picked up saute pans and clanked them together like swords. I tried to filter out the racket while looking more closely at the menus Yolanda had posted in the kitchen: Scrambled Eggs and Canned Fruit Cocktail for this morning; Baked Tuna with Tomato Salad for lunch; Broiled Chicken, Cauliflower, and Broccoli for to night, with packaged Angel Food Cake for dessert. If you were allergic to anything, you got yogurt. Whoopee!
Tomorrow the clients were getting more Scrambled Eggs with Toast, or Oatmeal with Tofu and Sugarless Applesauce for breakfast; Chicken Salad with fat-free mayo for lunch—I gagged—and Roast Pork Tenderloin with more Sugarless Applesauce plus Steamed Green Beans for dinner, with yet more Angel Food Cake. Another day of Awful, or offal, depending on how you looked at it.
Even when I’d gone to boarding school as a scholarship student, and we’d all complained about the food, nothing had been as bad as this.
An enormous crash, squealing, and hollering on the other side of the kitchen stopped me wondering about anything. Julian, Boyd, and the saute pans they were wielding had collided with the plastic vat of fruit cocktail, which in turn had spilled all over the floor.
“Oh, hell, boss, I’m sorry,” Julian apologized. “I’ll clean it up.”
“No, no, I’ll do that,” Boyd said. But then he said, “Wait. Don’t move. Don’t do anything.” He looked a tad ridiculous, I had to say, holding his pan aloft and peering down at the floor, as if he’d seen a giant insect and was about to whack it.
When Victor Lane bellowed, “Everybody out!” I jumped. I hadn’t heard or seen him come in. Nor had the two combatants. Julian had murmured something about looking for a mop, and Boyd was still staring in confusion at the mess on the floor.
“Victor, I’m so sorry,” I babbled. “These two, my, my, er, staff people, that is, were just trying to help me. I’ll clean up the spilled fruit, I promise.”
“Oh, no you won’t,” Victor Lane retorted. His skeletal face loomed too close to mine, and I reared back defensively. “I should have known Yolanda would screw up my place,” he continued angrily. “Appendicitis, my ass. She’s probably visiting relatives. And anyway, she should have let me choose a replacement. There are plenty of cooks out there who could use a job.”
“Sir,” said Boyd, “please—”
“Shut up!” screamed Victor, his back to us. “Get out of my kitchen!” He was at the sink, filling a bucket with
