Hot Dish (42 page)

“Hi.”

“Please,” Verie said, “won’t you have a seat, Miss …”

“Heidi Olmsted but Heidi is fine.”

“Excellent.” Verie beamed and pulled out a seat for her. Feeling a little like she’d just arrived in Oz, Heidi sat. Verie waited patiently for her to settle herself and returned to his side of the table, where he snapped open his cloth napkin and let it float to his lap.

“I have been informed, sub rosa, of course,” he said, “that in order to survive the culinary experience here, it is imperative to fuel the engine early, before the cook arises.” He held held up a plate of toast. “Toast?”

She took a slice.

“Coffee?”

She nodded gratefully.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked, nodding at Steve.

Verie poured her cup of coffee and handed it to her. “Last night he had a revelation of some personal magnitude, which he is all in a dither to share with Ms. Lind but the drat woman has gone missing, in spite of pledges to call him, so he’s in a peeve. He has been awake or rather, I should say, he
tells
me he has been awake all night, waiting here by the phone for her call. I suspect he slept on the floor. Either way, I am embarrassed for him, though I have tried to be supportive by rising at this ungodly hour to breakfast with him.”

“Why would he do that?” Heidi asked curiously.

“He fancies himself in love with her. Sugar?”

“What?” Heidi said. Oh, sure, she’d noticed the sparks yesterday. But this had to be a one-sided infatuation. She couldn’t imagine Jenny doing anything impulsive or unplanned or unwise. Like a relationship with Steve Jaax. “Does he overreact every time he has a crush?”

“I don’t have crushes,” Steve announced from the floor.

Verie leaned over the table, motioning her to do likewise. “It has progressed beyond infatuation,” he said in a stage whisper. “No gifts were exchanged but apparently bodily fluids were.”

Heidi drew back.

“Um.” Verie nodded confidingly. “It was all very Coen brothers. Very ‘If This Fish House Is Rockin’, Don’t Come Knockin.”’

“No! They did it in the fish house?” She couldn’t believe it. Jenny Hallesby doing the horizontal tango with a relative stranger was stretching credibility but Jenny Hallesby having sex in a fish house during a fishing tournament? Amazing.

Maybe there was hope for her yet. And if Steve actually did love her … Jenn Hallesby had made Heidi’s last two years in high school, which could have been pretty miserable, not only bearable but enjoyable. In Heidi’s opinion, no one deserved a love affair more than Jenny.

“Does Steve think he’s in love often?” she asked and waited breathlessly for Verie’s answer, amused by herself. Pregnancy had made a romantic of her.

Verie paused to consider her question, dabbing at his mouth with his napkin. “No,” he finally said. “Now that you mention it, not since …” He leaned sideways. “What was your third wife’s name, dear boy?”

“Margot.”

“Ah, yes. Thank you.” He straightened. “Not since Mar-got. That was nine years ago.”

“Maybe he really does love Jenny,” Heidi suggested.

“It’s possible,” Verie allowed, picking up his toast and spreading jam on it.

“I wish you wouldn’t talk about me as if I’m not here,” Steve said reproachfully from the floor.

Heidi put aside her natural shyness, made bold by her loyalty to Jenn. “All right,” she said, “why do you love Jenny, Steve?”

Steve didn’t answer. His arm remained covering his eyes and he stayed motionless for so long that Heidi had begun to suspect that he’d fallen asleep when he finally spoke. “I … complete her.”

Heidi set her coffee mug on the table with a bang. “Oh fer God’s sake …” she muttered in disgust.

Steve dropped his arm and rolled over, Bruno’s head dropping to the floor with a
thunk
.

“No,” he said, climbing to his feet. “I’m good for her. I’ve never been good for someone before. I’ve always been probably not such a good idea. But I’m a good idea for Jenn. Do you know where she is?”

“Nah-uh. I just came to see how Bruno was.”

“I thought his name was Prince,” Verie said.

“That’s just an endearment, Verie,” Steve said, his guilty gaze flickering to Heidi.

“If you renamed Bruno—” The phone rang.

With an expression of intense relief, Steve reached over and snapped it up. “Good morning. This is the Lodge, the Hallesby family’s bed and breakfast and future studio of sculptor—What? Jenny? Is that you? Where are you?”

His basset hound-homely-handsome face creased with frustration, he looked over at Verie. “I can barely hear her. The connection keeps drop—Jenny? Yeah. I hear you now.” He squeezed the phone to his ear. “No. You don’t owe me any explanation.”

He was quiet a minute, but from the exasperation on his face, Heidi could tell he wasn’t getting too much of whatever it was Jenny was saying. Then he said, “It’s a moot point. I already have it. You don’t need to—I said I ALREADY HAVE IT! Jenny? Jenny!”

With a quick, annoyed movement, he slapped the receiver back on the base.

“Where is she?” Heidi asked.

“At the casino, making the finals in some poker tournament.”

“What? Jenny doesn’t gamble. Why would she enter a poker tournament?”

“She told me this guy who’s put out the ransom for the butter head is threatening to tell the AMS people, and by extension Dwight Davies, about your homecoming kiss if she doesn’t come up with enough money to outbid me for it. The prize for the tournament is a hundred thousand.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yup.”

“A kiss? That’s ridiculous,” Verie said.

“Yup,” Steve said, raking back his hair with one hand. “If I hadn’t been so … Damn it.”

“But why did she call you?” Heidi asked.

Steve cast her a glance as guilty as it was pleased. “She knew I wanted it and she is beginning to suspect that she might just win this tournament. She wanted to tell me why I wasn’t going to get the butter head and that she was really sorry.”

“But you said you had it,” Heidi said slowly, not feeling particularly enlightened.

“Not the butter head. The thing that was hid in the butter head but I don’t think she heard me.” His face darkened. “She also told me who she was playing against in the last round, and one of them is Ken Holmberg.”

Heidi sat back in her chair and slapped her palm against the table. “Good. If she’s got to gamble, I hope she whips his pompous ass.”

“I don’t think you do,” said Steve seriously, wiping away Heidi’s smile. “I overheard that guy in the grocery store today. He’s being audited by the bank tomorrow, and from what he said, I don’t think the results are going to make anyone happy. I think,” Steve said, choosing his words carefully, “I think this guy is up at that tournament trying to win the wherewithal to make up the difference in some pension he’s underfunded.”

“Shit,” Heidi said. “Shit. If Minnesota Hockey Stix folds that means about fifty people out of work. That means fifty families with no income, no insurance, and no pensions. Most of them will have no choice but to leave.” She shook her head. “Do you know what the loss of fifty families means in a town this size?”

Steve headed for the back hall. A second later he emerged with Cash’s parka, the keys to the truck jangling in his hand.

“What do you think you are doing, Steven?” Verie asked. “This isn’t your problem. This isn’t your hometown. It isn’t like you to interfere.”

“Maybe it is this time,” Steve said soberly. “Tell Cash I borrowed the truck again but I’ll bring it back full.” And with that, he was gone, leaving Heidi looking at Verie askance.

“But where is he going?” she asked.

Verie expelled an extravagant sigh. “I think he’s gone to save the town.”

6:10 a.m.

Hilda Soderberg’s kitchen

Fawn Creek, Minnesota

Hilda Soderberg was cursing as she hit the garage opener. Seventy years she’d been making
aebleskiver
and never once an accident, but today, getting the cast-iron pan out of the overhead cupboard, it had slipped from her hand and fallen on her foot. It hurt like a
helvete
and it was getting worse. She thought maybe she’d broken something, and as she had to put on a funeral supper, which she had no intention of missing, she supposed she’d best go to the hospital so if they wanted to put a cast on it or something, they could get it done with quick.

She expected Neddie back anytime now, but Neddie wasn’t always the most dependable person in the world, and he might stop off to visit one of his no-account friends. So Hilda, being that breed of northern Minnesotan who wouldn’t trouble the devil for a light, bundled herself in layers of warm clothing and hobbled to the detached garage, knowing she would find Neddie’s snowmobile parked inside since Neddie would have driven the Chevy to the city garage.

Sure enough, there it was just where he’d left it. She hit the garage opener and pocketed the remote she kept on the table by the door. The hospital was only half a mile away, so she didn’t think twice about straddling the seat and starting the motor.

She did wonder a bit about whatever it was that Neddie still had bungee-corded to the back loosely wrapped with a sheet of burlap, but only a bit. Her foot hurt her like the devil.

She gunned the motor.

Dunk was bored and anxious all at the same time. He kept looking at the clock, counting down the minutes until Jenn Lind brought him his money and he could get his butter head. The exchange, to take place at
Storybook Land, was scheduled for nine o’clock, so he’d given Jenny until eight thirty to get him the cash. It was only ten after six now.

He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels. Nothing, nothing, and weather. The hospital didn’t subscribe to cable. He turned off the set, wiggling in his bed.

His skin beneath the heavy body cast was beginning to itch. He thought about hitting the nurse’s button and hoping Karin would come and stick that little bamboo whatchamacallit down his neck but Karin was off today.

He wished she wasn’t.

Maybe after this was all done, he’d mosey on back to town and take her out to dinner somewhere. And afterward they’d mosey on back to her place and he’d see if he could get her to put on the ducky scrubs so he could take them off.

The thought brought to mind her many and repeated urgings for him to get up and move around as much as possible so he’d be “back in top form soon.” He wondered if she’d meant anything by that.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and carefully lifted himself into an upright position. Not bad. Not bad at all. He walked around the bed, feeling more optimistic about the speed of his recovery with each step, and headed for the window.

It was still snowing, by God. Was it ever clear up here? They must have about five feet of snow on the ground….

He stared, unable to believe his eyes. The butter head, perched jauntily on the back of a snowmobile, coyly draped in fluttering brown burlap, sat right under his window in full view. He rubbed a hand across his eyes. Still there.

His eyes widened as he realized the potential here. He could have the key to that mausoleum crypt without paying these suckers a penny. And when Jenn Lind showed up, he could just pocket that cash for himself. If he could get down to that snowmobile before whoever drove it here did, he could drive the butter head somewhere out in the woods and stash it under some brush somewhere until such time as he could return, melt it down, and retrieve that key. Then he could hitchhike back to the hospital.

If
.

He hobbled to the narrow closet and opened it. His boots lay neatly on the floor, the snowmobile suit he’d been wearing at the time of the accident hanging above it. Excellent.

As time was a definite factor here, Dunk didn’t have the luxury of easing into the snowmobile suit; instead, he yanked it on and
that
hurt like hell. He balanced awkwardly beside the bed and shoved his bare feet into
the boots as the idea of trying to bend over to pull on socks was enough to make him break into a cold sweat. Then he cautiously stuck his head out the door of his room and, seeing no one nearby, hobbled as quickly as possible to the emergency stairwell.

The trip down was not pleasant, but finally, ten minutes later, he stood outside in the hospital parking lot right next to the butter head. Miracle of miracles, the key was still in the ignition. He wouldn’t even have to hot wire it.

He grunted as he pulled the burlap back over the butter head and resecured the loose bungee cords that held it in place, then eased himself on to the seat, the body cast digging into his thighs as he sat down and turned over the engine. It purred to life. Turning the throttle and looking around to make certain no one was watching, he drove slowly out of the parking lot and onto the road, still covered with a half foot of snow.

God must love him, he decided, smiling as he drove sedately down the road, the butter head jouncing companion-ably against his back. No one else was out trying to navigate through the glistening white snow blanketing every road and side street. So when Dunk heard the powerful drone of heavy equipment behind him, at first he didn’t think much of it. Until the drone revved up and the sound started to close, fast.

He looked over his shoulder to see a two-ton snow plow barreling down on him and knew he was in trouble. He couldn’t see much of the guy’s face but he saw enough to realize the guy was pissed and coming for him, and something inside told him he was coming for the butter head, too. Panicked but purposeful, Dunk twisted the throttle hard. The snowmobile flew forward, and in answer, the sound of the engine behind him roared higher. Damn it! Couldn’t anything be simple?

It was just not fair! He was going to some pretty fucking heroic lengths here, what with getting out of his hospital bed and all. Why couldn’t this guy just let him have the damn thing?

Well, he would soon enough. He opened up the throttle and in a few minutes hit the edge of town and headed straight for the lake. He’d like to see that snowplow try to catch him there.

As soon as he was in sight of the lake, Dunk saw just how he was going to lose the plow. A Ford Bronco was parked right in the center of the access road the city had plowed onto the lake. All Dunk had to do was whoosh by its left side, and so long, plow. He grinned, easing up on the throttle as he approached the lake. Some guy stood beside the SUV flapping his arms and yelling at him, even going so far as to step right out into the path Dunk had been planning to take. Asshole. Dunk veered more
sharply to the left and onto the ice. Behind him he heard the snowplow’s brakes squeal. Good-bye, sucker. He was home free.