Hot Dish (40 page)

Nat was right. It had all gotten screwed up, all twisted. Jenn’s navigation system had momentarily faltered.

“Don’t you want to know that your future is secure, rock-solid, guaranteed? You stick to the AMS script, and I promise you, it is.”

Yes. That was what she’d always wanted. “Yes.”

“Then for God’s sake, Jenn, shake the snow off your boots. Focus on the future. Be that guided missile I know and love.”

Jenn wasn’t a fool, no matter how foolish she’d been acting. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t be. “Okay.”

“That’s more like it.” Nat’s small body relaxed.

“But, Nat?” Jenn said, slowly turning. “There’s another problem.”

“I knew it! I knew there was something more behind this bizarre Jenn Lind thing.” Nat slammed the heel of her hand into her forehead. “What now?”

“There’s a certain little tiny piece of my past that Dwight Davies might take exception to.”

“Crap. I knew you were too good to be true! Okay. We’ll deal. Abortion, drug abuse, child out of wedlock?” Nat ticked off a list, watching Jenn closely.

“No, no, no.”

“Felony conviction, jail time, gambling habits?”

“No.”

“You don’t smoke, don’t have any DWI. I know you’re not gay, so what is it?”

Hearing it like that, the list of infractions that in Dwight Davies’s mind were grounds for expulsion, twisted Jenn’s stomach into a knot. How could she work for someone so sanctimonious and self-important? He was just Ken Holmberg on a bigger scale. On the other hand, she’d known that when she signed the contracts. “Any of those things could get me written off the show?”

“Some more than others, but on a day when Dwight was in a bad mood, yeah. Why? Which one is it, Jenn?”

“I—”

“No. Don’t tell me,” Nat broke in. “I don’t want to know. The less anyone knows, the better. The question is, can you fix it? Shut it down for good?”

“It depends. Some people might … There could be talk.”

“Talk?” Nat scoffed. “Talk we can probably control. Concrete proof is a different matter. Bills of sale, hospital records, photos? Not so easy to discount. Can you get rid of the proof?”

“I could if I had the money.”

“
Someone here is blackmailing you
? Shit, hon. No wonder you hate this town. Okay. Can you get the money? Friends? Family? Jaax?”

Steve? No. Aside from wanting the sculpture for himself, he despised Dwight and thought that working for him made a person morally suspect. Still, he’d said he “probably” loved her. You had to admire that sort of honesty, didn’t you? He might give her the money if she asked. But it wouldn’t be enough. She needed the entire fifty thousand.

There was only one place to get that sort of cash that fast. But to risk everything on the turn of card and some all but forgotten expertise she’d had as a kid? She took a deep breath, amazed she was even considering going back to the casino for a second time. It was contrary to everything she believed in. She wasn’t a risk taker, she wasn’t a gambler, and she wasn’t someone who played outside the rules. Was this how her father had felt when he’d arrived in Vegas? Okay. That had failed. But … had it?

She shook her head; the answer to that question wasn’t the issue right now. What was at issue was her life.

The winner of the All-Amateur Dusk-to-Dawn Tournament took home a cash prize of one hundred thousand dollars in addition to whatever winnings they took from the table. It was crazy and the odds were against her, but it had already worked once and maybe lightning would strike twice. Besides which, it was an amateur tournament, and what with the snowstorms keeping people from driving in from outside the area, most of those playing in the tournament would be local.

“Jenn. Is there any chance you can fix this?” Nat asked.

“A small one,” she answered. “But I’ll need to come up with a thousand dollars first. How much do you have?”

Nat opened her purse. It was her future, too.

3:05 p.m.

Hilda Soderberg’s home

Fawn Creek, Minnesota

Hilda Soderberg was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the various dishes she’d prepared for old Johanna Nygaard’s funeral tomorrow. She stood in the middle of the tiny, square kitchen and eyed the ranks of glass and ceramic casserole dishes like a field marshal surveying her troops. Two chocolate sheet cakes took over the linoleum-topped kitchen table, and Esther had promised to make two yellow—not that anyone would eat them, with her chocolate being offered, but Johanna had been a popular woman at the retirement home, so maybe—and that took care of dessert. On the counters, Hilda had a tuna hotdish, a tater tot hotdish, a scalloped salmon hotdish, and a casserole overflowing with meatballs. So that would be enough hotdishes then. Nets Youngstrom was bringing the ham and rolls, and the church kitchen was well supplied with coffee and Hawaiian Punch. Which only left the salads.

Which meant Jell-O, and while Hilda’s second drawer on the left side of the sink never held less than twenty packages in various flavors, what she didn’t have was miniature marsh-mallows, and you can’t make a decent pineapple-lime Jell-O salad without marshmallows and Johanna certainly deserved a decent salad for her sendoff. Which meant Hilda would have to go to the grocery store.

Now normally, Hilda would have walked the eight blocks to the store but snow completely choked the sidewalks and covered the street. It occurred to her that Neddie wasn’t too slick at his plowing job, but just the fact that he’d been gainfully employed by the city for over a year now kept her biting her tongue. Besides, Neddie seemed to be straightening up some lately. And she knew the snowstorms, one hard on the heel of another, were keeping him up and on the highways to all hours of the night. Fact was, he was still in bed, and for once she wasn’t going to yell at him to get out of it. Besides, once he woke up, he’d be in the kitchen stealing the
food for Johanna’s funeral and that just wasn’t right. So, instead, Hilda resigned herself to taking his noisy, stinkin’ snowmobile out again.

She headed for the back door, pausing to poke her head into Neddie’s bedroom. She didn’t worry that he might have guests. He wasn’t really a bad boy. Just lazy. Neddie had been acting different the last few days, too, spending a lot less time in front of the television and more time outdoors. Maybe he was finally starting to wake up and smell the coffee.

It was with this optimistic thought in mind that Hilda decided to make Neddie a special lunch when she got back from Food Faire:
julbrodsigrid
, potatoes with dill and homemade sausage. She smiled, feeling fonder of Neddie than she had in a long time. Dear Neddie loved to eat.

3:35 p.m.

The Food Faire parking lot

“Explain to me why we are in this grocery store again, dear boy,” Verie intoned as they waited for the stocky female cashier to bag his purchase.

“You’ll just have to trust me on this,” Steve said. “The Lodge is unique and wonderful, and you are lucky you are being allowed to stay there. They don’t accept guests.”

“What a novel marketing strategy,” Verie said. “A B and B that doesn’t take guests.”

“Exactly,” Steve agreed, then suddenly snapped his fingers. “I need Doritos,” he said to the cashier. “Where are they?”

The young cashier pointed to the far corner of the store. “Take your time. It’s not like we’re overrun with customers.”

That was an understatement, Steve thought as he trotted down the center aisle, passing an old lady jabbing some poor teenage stock clerk in the breastbone and demanding to know where he’d shelved the multicolored miniature marsh-mallows. Steve nabbed a box of Pop-Tarts on his way to the snack section, which was, he noted, in weird proximity to the pharmacy aisle. He stopped to peruse the choices—cool ranch or classic?—when he heard a male voice on the other side of the aisle, where the aspirin would have been. He was clearly talking on his cell phone.

“Look, Stan, thanks for calling me back. I know you’ve heard it before and I hate like heck to call you at home on a Sunday, but can’t you put off the bank on that audit a while longer? I’ve got the money. I’ve just got to make it liquid, you know?”

Steve could practically see the sweat pouring off this poor shmuck’s forehead, he sounded so miserable. He shouldn’t be listening. He plucked the classic Doritos giant bag from the top shelf and heard the guy on the other side say, “Okay, then. If you gotta on Monday, you gotta on Monday. It’ll be funded. Fully funded, yeah. Ninety thousand. I know”—
his voice had gone from wheedling to spiteful—“and then you can apologize when you sign that loan over to me. Bye then.”

Quickly, before the poor guy came around the corner and was embarrassed, Steve took off down the aisle. At the cashier, he tossed his bag down and grabbed a pack of gum.

Verie eyed the food. “B and Bs generally offer some form of sustenance at some point during one’s stay. Typically breakfast. Thus the name bed and
breakfast
.”

“You will fall in love with Nina Hallesby. But not her cooking. In fact, before we head back there, we should go to Smelka’s.” Steve fished some crumpled bills out of his pocket and handed them to the cashier just as a man, the same man he’d met the day he arrived, came up to the counter with a bottle of double-strength aspirin.

“Smelka’s,” Verie said. “You have gone native, Steven. Have you ordered your mukluks, yet?”

“Wait until you have had a
semlor
and then sneer,” Steve said, nodding at the guy—Holmes? Hamburg?—who flushed and nodded back.

“Hey, Mr. Holmberg,” the cashier said as she loaded the bags into Steve’s waiting arms.

Steve accepted them and headed out of the store, his thoughts moving along unfamiliarly un-Stevecentric paths. This guy needed to fund something or other at the bank before he got a loan approved. Apparently, he really wanted that loan. And apparently, he was embarrassed about whatever straits he’d gotten himself into. The guy was some industry leader here in town…. That was it. He made hockey sticks and he was the biggest single employer in Fawn Creek. Poor bastard.

Steve pushed the store’s glass door open using his shoulder and headed toward Cash’s truck, which Cash had lent him this morning so Steve wouldn’t be “stuck on that lake all day if you don’t have to.” Jenn had gone off to the motel with her agent in her Subaru. He wondered how long she would be and hoped it wouldn’t be long.

Steve liked being with Jenn. He wanted to hear her take on this Holmberg guy and maybe explain to her again why it was okay to seek vengeance against his ex-wife, because he had the unpleasant suspicion he hadn’t done a very good job. At least, he wouldn’t have been convinced and he really didn’t want Jenn to think poorly of him. For the first time in God knew how long, another person’s opinion of him as a human being, not as an artist, really, excruciatingly mattered. Love, he decided with delicious melancholy, could be painful.

He opened the truck door and was shoving the bags in while Verie went around to the passenger side when his eye was caught by a fluttering
brown sheet. Steve backed the truck out of the parking space and looked. Between the truck and a big, shiny new gas-guzzling SUV, there was a snow-mobile, something large and covered with burlap strapped to its rear end. A gust of wind snickered across the lot and plastered the material against the form beneath.

Steve stopped the truck. He knew that form. He’d given birth to it.

“What are you doing, Steven?” Verie called from within the truck cab.

“I’ll be just a minute.” He moved toward it, his eyes never straying from the snowmobile, as though afraid if he blinked it would disappear. He reached out, his heart jackhammering in his chest, and unhooked the bungee holding the burlap in place and pulled it up.

It was the butter head. But the butter head so changed, so hideously transformed she was barely recognizable. Little patches of freezer burn splotched the weirdly flaky surface of her “skin,” and her brow, once a lovely, flawless expanse, had sunk in, now creating a simian shelf of brow above her drooping eyes. Someone had cut off her rooster’s comb bang and turned it into a pair of balloon tire lips. Her left ear was missing.

“Poor butter head,” Steve murmured, running his hands lightly over the disfigured face. It was like the Butter Head of Dorian Gray, only that would be Jenny Lind. It was a good thing Jenny wasn’t here; she’d likely be dousing it with lighter fluid by now. This reminded Steve that he was in a public area, hovering over stolen property. There was no question of him calling the cops. Now that he’d actually seen his poor baby, he decided she’d be better put out of her misery or at least, for the sake of Jenny’s vanity, kept out of the public eye, and really, he only wanted one thing from her. The key.

He closed his eyes briefly, imagining Fabulousa’s shriek of defeat when he called to tell her what he had. Oddly, the imagined rage didn’t evoke nearly the satisfaction that he’d have expected. But then, the reality was sure not to disappoint.

Quickly, he skirted around to her back side. It was still there: the big curl behind her right ear. He looked around for something to dig with and spotted a snow scraper lying on the dash of the SUV next to him.

God bless Fawn Creek
, he thought fondly. No one locked their cars.

Five minutes later he held a small metal key in his hand. He flicked it once in the air, catching it deftly as he headed back toward the truck.

“This sounds extremely shady, Steve,” Verie said, from where he sat next to Steve. They’d turned up a sloping drive and were creeping toward the top.

“It is,” Steve said. “But, Verie …
Muse in the House
!” On the ride to the Lodge, he’d told Verie everything as his friend’s placid countenance
grew more amazed with each passing minute. “It was never included as part of the divorce settlement because you can’t award something neither party has. So I show up with it twenty some years after the fact, and as they say, possession is nine-tenths of the law. I’ll say it was a gift from an admirer who bought it on the black market.”