As I hauled myself out of bed, I remembered I had a solitary booking for the day - an anniversary dinner for the Kirby-Joneses, buyers for a local gift store who had just returned from Kenya. Weddings and anniversaries were usually my bread and butter in June. This June, however, it seemed as if people either were not getting married, were getting divorced, or were celebrating their anniversaries in Fiji. Today's job would be the perfect antidote for worry. I had been thankful for it, even though it had posed a few problems.
I stretched through my yoga routine and recalled all the fun Macguire and I had had planning the menu for the Kirby-Joneses. Twenty-five years ago, well-wishers at their wedding reception had so besieged the newlywed K-Js that the bride and groom had left Washington's Congressional Country Club ravenous. So we drove and drove, and then we stopped and had this wonderful Italian food, Mrs. Kirby-Jones had wistfully informed me at our planning meeting. It was at a marvelous place called Guido's on Rockville Pike. I wore my pink dress with the double-orchid corsage.
As it turned out, the Kirby-Joneses desired a menu offering Italian items that exactly matched the dinner they'd had right after their wedding reception. I'd promptly acquiesced. After all, most. food orders are emotionally based.
I moved from the yoga asana known as the Sun Greeting to some leg stretches. I recalled poor Macguire's unhappy face when he'd reported back to me. His painstaking investigations had revealed that Guido's-on-the-Pike in Rockville, Maryland, had gone out of business over a decade ago. Guido, now deceased, hadn't bequeathed any menus to his heirs. Of course, I had not revealed these details to Mrs. Kirby-Jones. As I said, I was frantic for work. I just need to know what you ordered, I'd said confidently to my new client. Don't give it a second thought, I'd maintained, we'll ask the restaurant for their recipes and it'll taste just like Guido's. With what I considered promising resourcefulness, Macguire had located a single back issue of Gourmet that contained Guido's-on-the-Pike recipe for Bolognese sauce. So now I was committed to serving pizza with goat cheese, ravioli in white wine cream sauce, lasagne verde with Bolognese sauce, tossed salad, Italian bread, and tiramisu to twenty people. But in April, when I'd booked the event, hoping we could serve dinner on the Kirby-Joneses' expansive deck, I hadn't figured on an incessant downpour on June 6. Maybe that was why Jake was howling. Somebody had left him out in the rain. I wanted to howl, too.
Coffee, I thought. I need coffee. I finished dressing for church and went in search of caffeine and the rest of the household. The only family member I could find was Scout the cat, a stray I'd adopted two years ago. He was crouched in a window well watching Jake bark. I would have sworn the cat was delighted to observe the dog's misery. To date, Scout had made no sign of forgiving us for adopting the hound.
"I'm sorry," I muttered, and stroked his back. know you would have preferred a gerbil."
Scout's response was the scathing feline equivalent of hrumph.
"Mom?" came Arch's voice from behind me. "Why I are you talking to the cat about rodents?"
My son's appearance this morning was a jumble of tortoiseshell glasses magnifying brown eyes, freckles, tousled brown hair topped with a baseball cap worn backwards, sweatpants, and a too-long, crookedly hanging orange poncho. "Well, Mom?" he said in the reproachful tone he often took with me these days. He straightened his glasses on his freckled nose and waited.
"I feel sorry for Scout. Why is that dog howling, anyway?"
Arch peered out the window and adjusted his cap. "He's not that dog. Jake's just excited."
"About what?"
"About going out with Tom and me."
"Out where? Aren't you coming with me to church?"
Arch frowned. "We're going on a mission, actually. Tom took me to the five o'clock church service yesterday. Jake is feeling a lot better, and not acting so...you know, nervous. We wanted to see if he could get his trust level back." He paused. When I didn't protest his attempt to rehabilitate Jake, he plowed on. "Listen, General Farquhar called while you were gone last night. I told him about getting Jake. He wants us to come visit."
"Who's 'us'?" I asked. I hated sounding like an interrogator, but when it came to General Bo Farquhar, there wasn't much choice. The only guest who isn't here is General Farquhar, Tony Royce had said. Says he's too busy. Really. General Bo, who also happened to be Marla's brother-in-law, had recently finished his prison sentence for possessing rocket-propelled grenades, a large quantity of C-4, Kalashnikovs, Uzis, and all kinds of other contraband. Until he became settled, the general was staying on the estate of some friends who were adapting military technology for law enforcement. I'd heard their thousand-acre spread west of Aspen Meadow was surrounded by closed-circuit cameras and a nine-foot electrical fence. Not the place you wanted to send your son with his untrustworthy dog for a pleasant afternoon romp in the pouring rain.
"Listen, Mom, General Bo says he's real depressed. He was hoping you could bring him something made with chocolate, since the people who're taking care of him don't like it or don't have it or something. His phone number's down in the kitchen. Anyway. Gotta fly." His high-topped black sneakers made squishing noises as he fled before I could raise any more objections.
"Arch, please tell me where you're going. I won't veto it. Even though it's raining, in case you hadn't noticed."
The orange poncho rustled as Arch's short legs hastened down the hallway. "Better ask Tom," he threw back over his shoulder. "I have to go make sure we have everything. Jake's getting impatient."
No kidding. I glanced at my reflection in one of Tom's antique mirrors, and wondered if what folks said about owners looking like their pets would come to pass. I was still a short, slightly chunky thirty-three-year-old with unfashionably curly blond hair and brown eyes. Jake, on the other hand, boasted a sleek brown body, a long nose, droopy eyes and ears, and a perpetually slobbery mouth. All these attributes, my son had enthusiastically reported, helped him smell better. I pressed my lips together. I wished I liked Jake more, since he made Arch so happy. When I'd divorced his father six years ago, Arch had started begging for a pet. But I was freshly single, financially shaky, and struggling to launch a new catering business, not to mention a new emotional life, and I couldn't face the idea of tending an animal. I couldn't picture tearing up endless heads of lettuce for guinea pigs or listening to hamsters race all night on their little wheels. Back then, it was all I could do to maintain myself and Arch and handle the food preparation for nervous clients.
I remembered the rainy day last month when Tom had arrived with Jake. The prospect of caring for an emotionally distraught and out-of-work bloodhound in addition to running my not-so-healthy catering business had been too much. I'd threatened to stick my head into the proofing oven with the cinnamon rolls. I was prevented from doing so by Jake's enthusiastic scrabbling up the cabinet door. Then his not-always-reliable olfactory gland directed him toward the oven, and his powerful legs and body shoved me out of the way as he moved in closer to the rolls. Apparently, Jake loved the smell of cinnamon.
I sighed and entered the kitchen. The delectable smell of lemon and cherries mingled. Outside, Jake yowled away from his doghouse. Rain spat against the windows. My kitchen was warm and snug and smelled terrific. Still, my mood failed to improve.
Tom was setting a single place with a flowered Limoges plate. Hearing my sigh, he shot me an appraising look. Like Arch, he wore a tentlike fluorescent orange poncho. I couldn't imagine what they were planning to do in the rain to restore Jake's shattered ability to trust humans. Clearly, homemade dog biscuits were not enough. Tom gave me his usual jaunty smile. His sand-colored hair was damp. Perhaps he'd already tried to quiet the dog outside, to no avail. Seeing my forlorn look, his handsome face and green eyes softened.
"Morning, Miss G." He pressed the button on the espresso machine while his other big hand reached for a diminutive cup. "Not feeling too happy? How about, some coffee cake? Be out in five minutes."
I sighed again. "Sure."
"Now, sit down and have some caffeine. We're going to be going out pretty quick here. Marla called. She wants you to go down to the Prospect office with her tomorrow morning."
"Oh, great." I gratefully sipped the dark, crema-laden espresso he handed me. "I'll be the referee between Marla and Albert Lipscomb. Sounds like loads of fun, huh?"
"You know, I've been thinking. I know I've heard of Albert Lipscomb," Tom said pensively as he re- moved the golden brown, cherry-studded cake from the oven. The fruity, buttery-rich scent was indescribable. "I mean, you told me he's Royce's partner, but there was some other context. It's been a while, though."
"What other context?"
He frowned. "Did he invest in goats? Or goat cheese?"
I laughed. "Not to my knowledge."
He sniffed the cake. "Listen, I just realized Arch and I won't be able to help you pack up for your event this afternoon. I know it's a big deal for you - "
"My dear, it's the only deal for me until I take muffins to the bank on Friday."
"No, no, you had two other calls besides the one from Marla."
I sighed once more. "Arch already told me about General Farquhar."
He slapped the cake onto a cooling rack and rummaged in his back pocket for his trusty spiral notebook. "People named Trotfield, they're Prospect Financial investors who say they loved your food at the mine yesterday. They're friends of Tony's or Albert's, I think. They need you for a dinner party this week. The husband is flying to Rio for five days, and they want to give him a big sendoff. They need you because their chef, an illegal alien from Sri Lanka, skipped." He gave me a wide grin. "I didn't tell Mrs. Trotfield I was from the sheriff's department. Didn't want to jeopardize your booking. Here's their number."
I took the sheet from him. "Yeah, I know them. He used to be a pilot for Braniff, wife has the money, now he flies charters. Thanks loads. What else?"
"Aspen Meadow Women's Club. Dinner meeting on home improvement, tomorrow. The club president, Janelle Watkins, called. She wanted your cheapest chicken dinner, keep it under twenty bucks a head. I said I thought you had a standard menu and Ms. Watkins begged me to fax it to her with a contract. Seize the day and all that. Didn't want her calling some caterer in Denver." He handed me two slick pages from the fax machine, one with my chicken dinner menu, the set prices, and contract stipulations - all signed by Janelle Watkins - the other a photocopy of Janelle Watkins's Visa.
I said admiringly, "Very good, Tom. But why the short notice?"
"Well, the club vice president was going to make the food, but seems she had a tiff with President Janelle yesterday. Veep huffs off saying the only way her home could be improved was if Janelle resigned from their club. I should have offered her a job working for Captain Shockley. Anyway, Madame President Janelle is paying for the dinner herself, says it's worth the price to be rid of that bossy veep who drove everybody nuts anyway."
I grinned. "Fix me another espresso, lawman. I think my luck is changing."
He laughed and ground more Italian roast beans. "Okay, look. We're doing a trail with Jake this morning. Arch is out getting a piece of scented clothing from the trail-setter right now."
"You're what?" I said, incredulous. "Doing a trail? With a bloodhound who was fired because he couldn't smell his own dinner if his life depended on it? And in this rain?" I wailed.
"Best time. Scent's stronger when it's damp. Arch's friend Todd has already hiked up to a spot we agreed on, behind a big rock in the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. He's waiting for us. We'll start at the beginning of that four-wheel vehicle path. It's not more than three miles."
"You and my son are going to hike a trail with Jake the retired hound dog for three miles, in the pouring rain? Do you know how much more chance you have of being caught in a rock slide with all the moisture we've been having?"
The second espresso hissed into the flowered Limoges cup. Tom clicked the tiny cup down in front of me and stooped to kiss my cheek. "Come on, don't ruin our fun, Miss G. Arch is dying to do this."
"Just listen, okay? Think of a cake with frosting. The frosting is the soil and loose rock we have in the mountains. Underneath is fractured rock-the cake. All this rain has added extra weight to the soil-frosting and could make it slide right off the underlying rock-cake. Got it? The land is especially unstable where streams have undercut banks. That's how you get major rock slides. And then - " I caught sight of his bemused expression and said, "Would you at least promise to be very careful?"
"Yes, Miss G. And would that be butter cream or meringue frosting?"
"With this weather, Arch is going to come home sick."
Tom grinned. "Oh, so first he wasn't going to come home at all because of the frosted-cake rock slide, and now he's going to come home with a cold. We're doing better. Anything else?"
Well, great. Tom had never had children and was not burdened with the worry that accompanied every foray into mountainous terrain. Nor did he know that taking a child out in wet, cold weather led to countless hours spent poring over old magazines in a pediatrician's office. These hours would be followed by countless pink teaspoons of Amoxicillin. Strep throat, ear infections, bronchitis, sinusitis... the man had a lot to learn. On the other hand, he did have a kid's own enthusiasm for going on adventures, and Arch treasured the time they spent together. I could just hear Arch if I vetoed their expedition. C'mon, Mom, I'm not going to get pneumonia! Sure. I sighed for the fourth time, sipped the espresso, then took a bite of Tom's coffee cake to keep from saying more. The delectable taste of lemon and the richness of cherry preserves infused the moist sour-cream cake. I narrowed my eyes at Tom, but he laughed.