Hot Dish (7 page)

He clapped as a tall blond woman in a powder blue sweater dress walked without hesitation or haste to his side and shook his hand. Ron had to look up. Pens started scribbling.

Jenna Lind was a good-looking woman, a quarter past young but holding well, her soft cashmere dress flowing over a curvier figure than other television personalities allowed themselves. Her honey-colored hair was pulled back in an old-fashioned French twist, à la Tippi Hedren in
The Birds
, which accentuated her high cheekbones and clear gray-blue eyes.

With the modest dress, the pastel colors and the upswept hair, there was definitely a late fifties vibe going on. But then, just when the reporters were ready to tack “vintage” on Jenna Lind, she stepped out from behind the podium and revealed a pair of tawny Christian Louboutin stilettos on
the end of a rather spectacular set of gams. She shifted and the little satin tassels set at the back of the ankle strap shimmied.

“Hello” she said, detaching the wireless microphone from its holder and approaching the reporters as Ron melted back among the AMS executives. She had just a hint of an accent, something round and soft. Like oatmeal with maple syrup. Nourishing and sweet. More reporters started jotting notes.

“First,” Jenn said, “let me say how delighted I am to be here and how happy I am that you’ve made room in your busy schedules to come down and visit with me.”

Visit with her? Who was she kidding? They were here because of Dwight Davies. And yet there wasn’t a trace of guile in her expression. “I’m sure you have some questions, so by all means, let’s get started, shall we?”

An old tabby renowned for making talking heads cry cleared her throat. “You’re being touted as the next Martha Stewart. I assume you don’t want to be another clone. So what makes you different?”

“I don’t crochet.”

A ripple of surprised laughter ran through the group. The subtle reminder of Martha’s prison record was unexpected, cute, and a little wicked. Dwight might not have approved.

Jenn smiled. She had a wonderful smile. It belonged to the ultimate girl next door—well, maybe not. She was a little old for the girl next door, but in this era of aging baby boomers, she might be something better. For women, the best friend next door I never had time for, and for men, the mature second wife who understands that aching joints sometimes sideline even the most sexually active mature male.

“Okay,” the old tabby said, clearly not as amused as her associates. “You’re squeaky clean, duly noted. Considering who your boss is, you’d have to be, wouldn’t you? But there is a glut of lifestyle shows on the networks and cable today. What are you bringing to the mix that makes you worth watching?”

The playful smile turned thoughtful. “I’m not going to try and make a room over for one hundred dollars or turn tuna cans into napkin rings. I’m interested in comfortable, stylish, and affordable living. Sometimes that takes more than fifteen minutes with a glue gun.”

The door in the back of the room suddenly swung wide open and the man himself, Dwight Davies, entered. Every reporter in the room grew instantly alert. This was what they’d come for.

Dwight was a big man, barrel chested and long legged, all six foot three of him covered in an expensive hand-tailored dark navy suit. He had
a big, balding head and a set of peculiarly delicate features squished into his big, blocky face. Right now those features were serene, but his little eyes whiplashed around the room. He held up his hands—they were big, too, the fingers sausagelike, a thick band of diamond-encrusted gold around his pinkie.

“Go ahead with what you were saying, Jenn. Sorry to interrupt.” His voice was not big; it was a tenor in a bass body.

A very young woman in Manhattan’s ubiquitous “Take Me Serious” black suit decided to be noticed and piped up. “But most of us don’t have the time to donate ten hours to a project. At least here in New York.”

“Now,” Jenn said with a soft smile, “you have no idea how hectic life can be on the tundra.” A couple people chuckled. The young reporter blushed. “It’s true some of my projects take time. For those unable to devote a day or a weekend, I design the projects to be spread out over the course of a week or even a month.”

“Excuse me.” Dwight Davies moved to Jenn’s side. “I’m sorry to break in but I just want to clarify that Miss Lind will keep in mind the resources and skill sets of her audience, and her projects will reflect her consideration. Right, Jenn?”

“Of course, Mr. Davies,” she said, smiling at him like they were old friends meeting at a cocktail party. “I am always mindful of my audience.”

“Isn’t she a peach, folks?” Dwight said, slinging a long arm around her and giving her a friendly hug. “You can take some pictures now.”

Cameras appeared out of nowhere, the sound of snapshots being taken filling the air like rifle reports at a shooting range for precisely forty-five seconds. “That’s enough. I just wanted to come and tell you a little about Ms. Lind and why I handpicked her to be the central figure in AMS’s daytime programming. Ms. Lind comes from Minnesota, where she’s enjoying her eighth straight year as the Midwest’s most popular media personality. The viewership for her show has risen 480 percent since she took over the spot. She’s going to be big, folks. Bigger than big. You might say I’m betting the bank on it.” He checked the Rolex strapped to his broad, hairy wrist. “I got time for one question, so make it a good one. You in the first row.” He pointed at a ready-looking guy.

“Mr. Davies, you’re spending a lot of money launching your network and you’ve tagged an unknown to be the star. Isn’t that a gamble?”

Dwight gave the man a flat look of contempt. “I don’t gamble. And you shouldn’t either. None of you. Gambling is for fools and wastrels, and I am neither. Jenn Lind is a bona fide lady who will make all of us at AMS proud.” Then he gave Jenn another little squeeze and, having bestowed his official blessing, left.

A few reporters checked their watches. Three minutes.

Jenn turned back to the group. “I can see I’m going to have to get him a ‘Minneapple’ mug,” she said, brokering a few polite laughs.

“You clearly love Minnesota. Is there anything Minnesotans do poorly?” someone asked.

“Well,” she said, “Minnesotans are not known for public displays of affection. Not that they aren’t passionate. For example, I knew an old Swedish couple that went out to dinner for their fiftieth anniversary. He looked across the table at her and saw in her eyes the pretty young girl he wed, and in her smile the tender mother with whom he raised four kids, and in the gentle lines on her face the grandmother who so generously shared her wisdom. And he thought of all the years of companionship and joy they had shared, and how very, very much he loved her. So much, in fact, that he almost told her.”

A riff of light laughter arose from the group.

“Miss Lind, it says in the material here that you got your start at age seventeen when you stepped in to pinch-hit for a local morning show hostess. Would you expand on that?”

“Certainly,” she said. “I, along with the other finalists in a local pageant, was scheduled to appear on
Good Neighbors
, a program being broadcast live from the Minnesota State Fair. When we arrived on the set, we saw the star of the show, Sharon Siverston, being taken away in an ambulance. She’d had an accident in the previous segment at the Baby Barnyard Petting Zoo.”

“What was that?”

“A calf bit her,” she said with a small sigh, as if calves biting people were a common but unfortunate occurrence in Minnesota. “Her next spot was a cooking one and the producers were trying to decide how to fill the sudden eight-minute gap. I had just won a blue ribbon for baking, so I volunteered to do the segment.

“Shortly afterward, I was asked to do a regular spot. When Sharon stepped down a few years later (the poor dear’s nose never did look quite the same)”—here she paused and, by God, she really
did
look saddened—“they asked me to replace her and there I have been ever since.”

“You were Miss Fawn Creek?” a voice from the back abruptly asked.

She looked around to find the speaker. “Yes.”

“Your hometown must be very proud of you.”

“I hope so.”

“Do you ever get back there?”

“Oh, yes. As I always say, I’m very fond of the Fawn” Her press release credited her upbringing in Fawn Creek as the inspiration for many
of the “heritage” recipes used on her show. “My folks still live there. So, yes, I get back quite often.”

God, you had to love a gracious, mature woman who called her parents “folks” and did so without a hint of self-consciousness.

“If you were Miss Fawn Creek 1984, then you were also the model for the butter sculpture Steve Jaax cites as being the turning point in his career. Am I right?”

At this, a buzz arose. A couple reporters who’d been eyeing the door stopped. This was unexpected. Apparently by Jenn Lind, too. And that was interesting.

She blinked and, using the armrests on her chair, lifted herself up so she could better see the questioner. “Excuse me?”

“Dan Piccatto, contributing arts editor for
Vanity Fair
.” This awoke a fresh surge of murmurs. What was an arts editor doing here? Especially an old silverback like Dan, who usually only covered highbrow art news. “Are you the model for Jaax’s
Butter Epiphany
!”

Someone guffawed. Steve Jaax, arguably one of the most celebrated sculptors of the twenty-first century, pinpointed the origins of his signature works to a few weeks in the summer of 1984, a period he fondly, and without any consideration for veracity, referred to as his “outlaw period.”

Over the years, the story had gained almost mythical stature. Jaax, so it went, was running from the law (and his then wife, the internationally famous fashion model Fabulousa) when he’d taken a gig at the Minnesota State Fair carving the busts of winning dairy princesses out of frozen butter. While working on a hundred-pound block, he had been visited by a vision, seeing in the way light shone through the semitranslucent butterfat the basis for the fiber-optic-and-resin pieces that would become his trademark.

Though a few detractors claimed Jaax had become as celebrated for his celebrity as his art, it didn’t matter. Jaax was still big news. The reporters started scribbling away.

“Are you?”

“Yes, I … I am.” She adjusted an earring. “I haven’t thought about that … it … in years. To be honest, I hadn’t realized anyone even knew about it.”

“But that’s why I’m here,” Piccatto replied, clearly surprised, “because of the butter sculpture.”

Jenn Lind’s perfectly arched brows lifted.

“My office received a fax this morning from the AMS publicity department saying that you were going to be grand marshal of the Fawn Creek sesquicentennial this December.”

This definitely caught her off guard. “Well, I—”

“There was a bullet on the bottom saying that you would be appearing alongside the butter sculpture of you created at the Minnesota State Fair by Steven Jaax.” Piccatto held up a piece of paper.

Jenn’s face abruptly cleared. “Then the sculpture must be a facsimile. The original was melted down and used at the Lutheran Brotherhood Corn Feed the weekend the fair ended. All of the princesses donated their sculptures to the event. It was well covered by the local media. I’m sorry but I—”

“No,” Piccatto insisted. “I called the town. They swear it’s the original. Apparently your parents had it in a freezer in a”—he shuffled through some papers—“barn all these years.”

“Really?” She seemed a little discomposed. “Still, whoever sent out that press release may have gotten it wrong. It may be the same source that has me accepting Fawn Creek’s flattering invitation to be their grand marshal, which, I must tell you, I have regretfully declined due to my current obligations to AMS—”

“Excuse me!” Vice President and Programming Director Dan Belker, who’d been standing along the wall with the other coterie of AMS officials, beaming like a proud grandfather, bustled over to Jenn’s side. He raised a hand. “This is all my fault, I’m afraid. A representative from Fawn Creek contacted me late yesterday with information regarding the amazing discovery of Mr. Jaax’s butter sculpture,” he explained. “The conversation got around to how they’d invited Jenn to be their grand marshal. I wasn’t surprised to hear that she’d declined because of the shooting schedule for
Comforts of Home
. Jenn has a great work ethic.”

He patted her shoulder approvingly. “But I got to thinking about it, and well, I called Mr. Davies and after a quick chat we agreed. You just don’t turn down an honor like that. So I called the town back, and knowing how she feels about Fawn Creek and how happy this would make her, I accepted on her behalf.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell her yet.” He nodded at Jenn, who was regarding him with a wide-eyed stare, frozen between amazement and … something else. Probably delight. Probably.

An abrupt, odd, but transforming smile suddenly covered her face. “Well, then, thank you, Mr. Belker. I can’t tell you what this means to me. Thank you.”

She rose to her feet. “So! I’m thinking this is as good a place as any to wrap this up, eh, friends? So thank you for coming. It’s been my pleasure.”

1:50 p.m.

Park Plaza Hotel hallway

“You laid on the Minnesota accent a little thick there at the end,” Jenn’s agent, Natalie Fishman, said as Jenn finished shaking the last reporter’s hand and escaped into the hall beyond the conference room. “I was afraid you were going to break out the ‘Sure, you betcha’s.”’

“Not to worry, my small, cynical friend,” Jenn said lightly.

Only a nudge over five feet and just poking into her third decade, with her stick-straight black hair chopped off at her jaw and her thin, flat figure, Nat looked uncannily like an Edward Gorey character. One of the scary children.

“And ‘Fond of the Fawn?”’ Nat said, falling into step beside Jenn as they headed to the other side of the hotel, where the AMS executives were waiting. “How do you sleep at night?”

“Rocked to sleep by the sound of all those thousand-dollar bills crinkling inside my mattress,” Jenn said cheerfully. It had been a slam-dunk performance.