Diane Davidson - Killer Pancake

“Sorry.” Claire’s frowning lips were colored a purplish-tan. I wondered what color the Mignon folks had christened it: Passion Plum? or Torrid Tan? “Expecting a bit of trouble, I’m afraid.”

“A bit of trouble?” I shifted the vat uncomfortably. “Parking trouble? Or some other kind of trouble? And who exactly is doing the expecting?”

Claire closed her eyes. Her lids were shaded in a pure powdery wave of purple and brown. I was in awe. One moment she looked and sounded like a girl, the next she was a sensuous woman. “Right. See this color?” She pointed.

“Yes.” I shot a glance at Julian. He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. The connection between parking problems and eyeshadow eluded him too.

Claire opened her eyes wide. Her irises were dark violet. I wondered how many males besides Julian had gotten lost in their mesmerizing depths. “Right. According to the most recent Beastly Bulletin , Mignon Cosmetics blinded albino rabbits testing Sensual Midnight eyeshadow.”

“Beastly Bulletin?” I said faintly.

“Animal rights newsletter,” Claire announced crisply. “So the way we heard it, the BB folks have organized a task force. They’re starting a protest against Mignon.” She shrugged. A shiver went down her exposed shoulders and through her short-skirted black sheath, the kind of dress not usually seen at luncheons, the kind of dress I haven’t had the figure for since I was sixteen. “Word from store security is, they might be causing problems at the banquet. Sorry ’bout that,” she added with a nod at all the vegetables.

“Causing problems? Demonstrators? Because of albino rabbits?” I was still trying to get my footing in the cosmetics universe. “These people are protesting at today’s banquet?”

“Yeh, we think so. Their campaign’s called Spare the Hares.” As this came out speh the hehs , it took me a few beats to translate. “Yesterday,” she went on, “the animal rights people were outside the department store. Demonstrating. Y’know, Prince & Grogan carries Mignon exclusively in the Denver area. So we’re the target.” We’h the ta-get. “The demonstrators even had a picket line. Today we heard they might be made up as freaks. They could be swinging rabbit carcasses at each person who comes in—”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” I shrieked. I banged the vat down on the counter. “I give to the Sierra Club! I give to the National Wildlife Federation! I don’t even wear eyeshadow! Can’t I get some kind of safe passage or something?”

“Y’don’t know the kind of person y’dealin’ with here,” Claire observed. Her slender body slid over in the direction of the steamer. “They see you carrying in that fish over there? They’ll mark you as the enemy. A fish murderess. They’ll scatter your food trays from here to kingdom come. All for rabbits.” She giggled. “Rabbits—the scourge of Australia! My folks wouldn’t believe this one, I can tell you that.”

“Just tell us where to park,” Julian interjected placatingly before I could erupt again. “We’re not into carcasses.”

“Okay.” She puckered her painted lips. “You know where the entrance to the garage is?” We nodded. “The mall has that aboveground parking garage,” Claire explained, “and the entrance to the Hot Tin Roof Club is on the first level. There’s a glass door at the entrance, but we’re supposed to ignore that. The club’s service entrance is an unmarked door inside, next to Stephen’s Shoes. You walk through the shoe store, then come into the club.”

I had the sinking feeling I should be writing all this down. The Beastly Bulletin . The service entrance by the shoe store. A picket line. Carcasses.

“Prince & Grogan’s head of security,” Claire was saying, “has told all the Mignon people not to park by the department store or the nightclub, because of the demonstrators. We’re supposed to scatter our vehicles, but not to use the garage roof, because they’re getting ready for the food fair. Y’know. What’s it called?”

“A Taste of Furman County,” I replied dully. Starting day after tomorrow, I was supposed to be at that food fair. Starting day after tomorrow, I prayed the demonstrators would not be at that food fair.

“We just park and come into the club through the service entrance next to the shoe store,” Claire concluded triumphantly. The maneuvers in this particular war appeared to please her immensely. “The head of security will be in the garage. Name’s Nick. He told us they’ve called the police in. Just in case things get messy.”

So that was where Tom was going today. Although his official title was Homicide Investigator, there weren’t enough homicides in Furman County to occupy my new husband full-time. So he was kept more than busy analyzing robberies and assaults and going out on special assignments, like today. When I’d asked what today’s assignment was, he’d answered mischievously, “Shopping.” And more than that he wouldn’t say. He didn’t want me to worry, and I didn’t want to be intrusive. In the two months of figuring out what it meant to be married after extended periods of being single, we were both treading carefully around each other’s privacy. But honestly, the man was impossible. We could have planned a late lunch. Real lunch too, with vichyssoise and pâté, maybe a little hasenpfeffer …

“Goldy?” queried Julian. “Are you going to steam that sole up here or down there?”

“I’m going to start it here and finish it there,” I said. “It’s the last thing I have to do.” The steamer was full of water. I flipped on the burners, lowered the vat of asparagus soup into a box, and packed up the crudités. Within moments, steam bloomed plentifully and I laid the sole fillets close together on a rack above the bubbling water. When I turned around, Julian and Claire had disappeared. “What the—”

I knew Julian couldn’t, wouldn’t leave without helping me pack the supplies into the van. Buffet for forty was still just that, and it was not possible for one caterer to do all the hauling, setting up, and serving. But, I reminded myself as I vaulted out the back door to check the van, love had made Julian forgetful in the past few weeks. First he’d neglected to bring two out of three desserts to a fund-raising picnic for the ACLU. As a result, I’d survived endless jokes about no freedom of choice and had given the ACLU a hefty discount on their final tab. Julian, embarrassed, had offered to take the docked pay off his own. Of course I wasn’t heartless enough to do that. The kid was saving money to take to college, But I did promise him the next time he screwed up for the ACLU, I’d punish him with a John Birch Society barbecue.

I checked inside my detached garage. Julian’s Range Rover—inherited from former employers—sat stolidly next to my van, but neither Julian nor Claire was in evidence. I peeked around the back of the garage and remembered another example of Julian’s recent spaciness. Just last week he had managed to get into a car accident with a new client, Babs Braithwaite. Three days after Babs had booked me for her Fourth of July party, she and Julian had crashed into each other. Usually a careful driver, Julian had managed to be rear-ended by Babs in her Mercedes 560SEC. Babs said he’d stopped in the middle of an intersection. Julian said he thought he had his turn signal on. He admitted he’d been only half watching though, because moments before the collision, a giggling Claire had tried to cool off by putting her shapely feet out the window of the Rover. But it had been no joke when Julian had been judged at fault. The Mercedes had sustained a thousand dollars worth of damage, and Julian’s savings would be sorely depleted paying the deductible. It seemed that even when I tried to save him money, he ended up losing it anyway.