Hot Dish (22 page)

They did?

“Well, Nina didn’t do much of that when Jenny was little. She was busy with other stuff. Charity work. Playing hostess for the company. We entertained a lot. Traveled even more. You know?”

“What does that have to do with the butter head?”

“I’ve lived here too long,” Cash said with a short, mind-clearing shake of his head. “I forget there’s a front door to every conversation. Nina doesn’t have anything from Jenny’s girlhood except that butter head.”

Steve waited, listening carefully for some clue as to how he was going to talk Nina into giving up the butter head.

“She was really proud Jenny won the Miss Fawn Creek pageant,” Cash went on. “It wasn’t just because she thought her daughter was beautiful. Most moms think that. It was because Jenny had set her mind on a goal and she went after it tooth and nail. We were both proud of her, trying to fit in and at the same time pay her own way through college. She never did fit in much here,” he said in a thoughtful voice. He looked up. “Anyway, that butter head is one of the only things Nina has from Jenny’s girlhood.”

“But Jenny didn’t make the butter head,” Steve protested. “
I did
.”

“Yes. But we didn’t have any senior pictures taken of Jenny. She wouldn’t hear of it. So the butter head is as close to it as we’ve got.”

“Look, it’s not like you can hang it on the living room wall,” Steve said, confident such a reasonable argument would win over Cash. “What do you do, go out in the barn and visit it once a week?”

“Of course not,” Cash said.

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“‘Bout four years ago.”

“Then it shouldn’t make any difference to you if I own it. I’ll have a hologram made of it and send it to you.” He was flummoxed. Cash didn’t appear any closer to giving up the butter head than he had ten minutes ago.

“Nina has every clipping covering Jenny’s pageants in an album. Not that she’s weird about it or anything. I mean, she doesn’t sit up at night, fondling the pages and dabbing at her eyes,” Cash said a little defensively, enough of a Minnesotan to consider sentimentality a no-no.

“Okay.” For a minute, Steve considered telling Cash exactly why he wanted the butter head but if Nina Hallesby was sentimental about it, he doubted telling Cash his plans to open it up would convince him to part
with it. He’d do better playing the roles of Artist and Creator. Besides, just because he wanted to lop off the back of its head didn’t mean he didn’t really want to see it first. But if it really meant something to Nina …

Damn, he hated moral conundrums.

“Anyway”—Cash discovered another floorboard, swooped down on it with the elan of Zorro marking an evildoer, and X’ed it—”I don’t know if Nina would sell it but you can always ask.

“There.” Cash had finished checking off the floorboard and was looking around the rest of the room with a critical eye. “Whatcha think?”

Steve considered. “It’s cold up here.”

“Yup,” Cash said equitably. “And not likely to get much warmer. The place wasn’t exactly built to code. Whatever heat does get up here is jerry-rigged. I’d give you a space heater but the same goes for the wiring and you’d probably burn the whole place down.”

“Can I have an extra blanket?” Steve asked.

“Sure. Or”—he considered Steve critically—”you
could
take one of the bedrooms on the second floor. You can get to them by a regular staircase, they’re a lot warmer, and they have a more cozy feeling, having drapes and less windows and more furniture.”

“No! I gotta stay here,” he said earnestly. “Please.”

“Okay. But you’ll have to make up some sort of waiver clearly acknowledging that I told you not to step on the floorboards with the X’s and you understood the dangers and you agreed not to bring a space heater up here and that if you die your estate will not sue us.”

“Agreed.”

“And if Bruno goes through the floorboards, you have to tell Heidi.”

Steve looked at Bruno in delight. “He’s staying with me?”

“Unless Heidi comes and gets him. He sure as hell isn’t staying with me. I already got a bed partner. And Jenny’s not a dog-in-bed type, you know.” He looked a little saddened by this, as if his daughter was denying herself one of life’s pleasures. Steve, who’d never slept with a dog in his bed, either, was more than willing to believe this.

“I’ll write something up before dinner,” he said.

5:45 p.m.

The Lodge

“You know” Steve said, “I’m sorry I forgot to tell you this, but I’m allergic to mushrooms.”

Nina’s Fiberlicious Risotto was the dietary equivalent of a high colonic, a grayish heap of grains more uncooked than cooked, with sharp bits and scratchy pieces floating on top of it in a watery, flavorless broth. The only ingredient he was certain about was a leathery piece of mushroom. Thus, his sudden allergy.

The Hallesbys, Steve decided, must have had cast-iron stomachs. Jenn was dutifully paring away at her mound while Cash, after one look at his plate, had donned the expression of a man determined, and pitched in, forking food slowly and methodically into his mouth.

“Oh! Oh, dear,” Nina now exclaimed in alarm. “Are you going to be all right?”

Across the table, Jenn, unconcernedly dabbing at her mouth with her napkin, set it down and asked, “Are you going into anaphylactic shock?”

Nina’s alarm became outright agitation. “Should we call the ambulance?”

Jenn pushed back her chair. “I’ll get Uncle Phillip’s beesting kit—”

“No!” God, no. Steve hated needles. “No, that won’t be necessary. It’s not that kind of allergic reaction. I just break out. Hives. Itchy. Not dangerous.”

“Oh, dear,” Nina said. “We have calamine lotion. Jenny, find the calamine—”

“There’s no need.” Steve caught Jenny’s arm as she popped up to do her mother’s bidding with suspect alacrity. He caught a glimpse of her turned face. She was trying hard not to laugh. “I don’t think I had enough to cause a reaction.”

With a look of disappointment, Jenn sat back down. He wouldn’t have recognized her as the sophisticated, well-groomed woman of this morning.
She’d exchanged her corduroys for a pair of jeans and her silk blouse for a raspberry-colored waffle-knit long-john top. Her hair hung in soft waves just below her jaw, framing a face scrubbed clean of makeup. Her skin wasn’t perfection. There were laugh lines at the corners of her gray-blue eyes and just the very first hint of loosening along that strong jawline. A few freckles dusting the tops of her cheeks. Her nose was just a little asymmetrical and a tiny scar marked the bottom of her chin.

He thought she looked great. Demeter after her first run-in with Hades: forceful, female, ripe but ripening still.

She’d probably kill him if she knew what he was thinking.

In his experience, women, especially women who made a living out of celebrity, hated being ripe. Which was too bad. He liked mature women. And it didn’t have anything to do with their vast wells of experience, wisdom, or endurance. He simply thought succulent was sexier than green.

“Well, I can’t let you go hungry,” Nina was saying. “I’ll just scoot back in the kitchen and fix you something else. It won’t take but a few minutes.”

“Mom,” Jenn said tentatively, “I could—”

Nina stood up and pressed a hand on Jenn’s shoulder. “No, Jenny. This is my kitchen and here health takes precedence over taste. Besides, as you educate your palate, you’ll discover that the taste of all those fats and sugars and red meats becomes less appealing. Don’t they, dear?” She directed this last question to Cash, who just kept eating.

Nina smiled at them as if her point had been made. “Now, then, how about a nice preserved-fish omelet? I preserved the fish myself. It’ll take fifteen minutes.”

Steve was by no one’s account, including his own, a fussy eater but there were some things instinct alone convinced him to avoid. Like Bruno under the table, whom he’d been trying unsuccessfully to entice into licking the rest of the risotto off his fork.

“That is so sweet of you, Nina,” Steve said. “But I’m afraid the mushrooms upset my stomach a little. So I’ll just sit here and keep you company, if I may?”

“You’re sure?” Nina said doubtfully, reseating herself.

“Absolutely.”

Cash, who’d been eating his way through his risotto with a singleness of purpose that precluded paying attention to anything else, including Steve’s allergies, finished his last mouthful and set his fork down. He looked up and beamed. “Why’s everyone popping up and down like jack-in-the-boxes?” he asked.

“No reason, Dad,” Jenn said.

“Oh? Okay. Then let’s have another glass of wine.” He held up the bottle. “Jenny?”

“Please.” She held out her glass and Steve followed suit.

The shortcomings of the food were made up for by the Hallesbys’ wine cellar.

“I should go online tonight and restock the wine cellar. The Buck Rub closed,” Cash told Jenn.

“I’m not surprised,” she answered. “I’m just amazed he lasted as long as he did, the way he gouged on prices.”

“And the Tinker Hut has closed, too. But just for the winter.”

“The Christiansens bought a place in Naples, didn’t they?” Jenn asked. “Dub always said he was going to.”

For someone “disconnected” from the town, Jenn certainly knew a lot about what was going on.

“How long do you think you’ll be staying, Jenny?” Nina asked.

“Eleven days.”

“Ten hours, thirty-two minutes …” Cash muttered. He steeled a glance at his daughter. “Have you set your alarm yet?”

“Dad, don’t be like that. I have lots of things to do with the new show and wrapping things up in Minneapolis. It’s crazy.”

“Your father just likes your company,” Nina said. “‘Love knows not its depth ‘til the hour of separation.”’

Steve looked at Nina, interested, waiting for someone to comment on her quote. No one did. “Kahlil Gibran,” she finally said.

Jenn and Cash continued looking at each other without expression. There was something going on. All Steve’s instincts were quivering and he had good instincts. His own parents had died when he was a kid, and afterward he’d been sheltered, if not raised, by a maiden great-aunt. She’d been too old to do much “raising.” She’d love him, though, vaguely, inattentively, but with unstinting approval. Thus, not having had too much interaction with families, Steve was a little reticent to trust his instincts regarding them, but still …

“I have to get back to the apartment,” Jenn finally said in careful tones. “I haven’t packed anything and I’m expecting the Realtor to have found me a new place by the end of the month.”

Cash shook his head. “How can you live somewhere you haven’t ever seen?”

“Because I pay a very reputable firm to make sure that it meets a very strict set of criteria—that’s how.”

“But what about the ‘feel’ of a place?” Cash protested. “The ambience. What if it isn’t right? Not homey?”

Huh. “Home,” Steve realized, was a word he’d never heard Jenn use. “Place,” “apartment,” “house,” but never “home.”

“It’s a place to sleep and do some work. If I spend as much time in my new place as I have in the old, it won’t amount to that much. Don’t look so worried. People hire people to find them places all the time.” She looked at Steve for support. “I bet you had a residence finder, didn’t you, Steve?”

“I sleep in my studio,” he said. “Never really saw the point in having a bunch of rooms I’d never use anyway.”

“See?” Jenn said triumphantly. And why was she triumphant? Because he knew as little about “homes” as she did? What a pair they made.

“Are you really sure this is what you want?” Nina asked suddenly.

“What?” Jenn asked.

“This new job of yours. It sounds like a lot of pressure.”

“It will be,” Jenn conceded easily. “But who cares? I’ll be one of the most widely viewed lifestyle authorities on television.”

“That’s what you are, a ‘lifestyle authority?”’ Nina asked softly.

Whatever the target of Nina’s subtext, she’d obviously scored a direct hit because a red stain spread up Jenn’s throat. “It’s what the public seems to think I am,” she said stiffly. “It’s what they pay me for.”

“You’re not doing something just to say you made it to the top of the heap, are you?” Cash asked. “You have choices, you know. It’s important to take the time to figure out not only what you’re doing but why you’re doing it.”

There wasn’t any anger in Jenn’s expression anymore; the stiffness had dissolved. She looked frustrated, sad, a little embarrassed. Her father wore the same expression. Steve wondered if either of them realized that their disapproval and disappointment were mirror images of the other’s.

“Your father is proud of you, dear,” Nina, playing peacekeeper, was saying. “He’s just concerned about some of the things he hears about this Dwight Davies.”

“He’s a prick,” Steve said. The Hallesbys traded knowing glances. So they thought so, too. “He is,” he said gravely. Then, seeing the dagger strike in Jenn’s glance, he added, “But sometimes you have to work for pricks.”

Cash mulled this over for a second. “Jenny had such—”

“Oops! Look at the time!” Jenn cut off whatever he’d been about to say, making a show of sticking her wrist watch over the table. “And it was snowing earlier. If I want to make it to Storybook Land by seven, I’d better get going.”

Steve stood up, too. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t have to go,” Jenn said. “It’s dark out and I won’t be gone long. You’ll only be bored.”

“I think I should.” There was no way he was leaving the procurement of his butter head to a woman who clearly didn’t care whether she came back with it or not. “These men are kidnappers. There’s no telling what they’re capable of. I won’t feel right sitting back here while you’re out there alone, facing God knows what sort of danger.”

“Steve,” Jenn said, “they stole a
butter head
. It was hardly a violent crime.”

“Yeah,” he allowed, thinking quickly, “but still.”

“Still nothing,” Jenn said. “I appreciate the sentiment but these guys are clowns, not hardened criminals. Fer chrissakes, I talked them down to one hundred dollars! If you’d have let me, I’d have probably gotten them to return the thing gratis. So just stay here and keep Bruno company and I’ll be back in a jiff.”