Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

Leah eyed the two of us narrowly. Was she listening? Hard to tell. André accompanied Sylvia Bevans out of the museum kitchen. She grasped a plate that she piled with goodies from the table.

Rufus went on: “So in comes this macho guy, Gerald Eliot. First he screws up Leah’s job, then he says he has to do some consulting on wiring around the windows. Charges Merciful Migrations six hundred bucks delay time. They say they’ll pay him and they don’t. Maybe Leah finally paid him out of her pocket. But nothing happened because by that time he was getting it on with Rustine. He had to do something with his delay time, right? So Leah fired him, but I’m sure Hanna put her up to it, since she was always telling us what a crummy guard Gerald was at the museum, even though she didn’t work here anymore. You know, she still thinks of the place as hers.”

“What about Leah Smythe? How did she feel about Gerald?”

Rufus whispered, “Well, how would you feel? She had broken plaster and a century of dirt all over her cabin. Maybe she was personally out six hundred for the demolition and six hundred for the delay. Ian had to deal with a model who was pissed off because her boyfriend lost his job. But do we have a single window in the kitchen?”

Leah shot Rufus a dirty look. He closed his mouth.

I whispered, “Wow. Would you like some coffee, something to eat?” I motioned to the spread. “Or do we have to wait for Prince Ian to call the break?”

“Prince? Please . Emperor, at the very least. Czar, maybe. And no, thanks, I’ll wait.”

“Break!” called Ian Hood from the far room. Had he heard us? I hoped not.

The crowd all made a beeline for the coffee and snacks. I checked that Santa had his separate fruit bowl and scampered to the kitchen door. André and Julian were listening attentively to Sylvia, who was drinking a cup of coffee and gesturing with a roll.

“And of course,” she went on, “the murder investigation has been hampered by that incompetent at the sheriff’s department, Tom Schulz—”

“Ah, excuse me,” I interrupted as I stepped boldly into the kitchen. “Sylvia? What are you talking about?”

She turned slightly pink. I folded my arms and waited for a response. André thrust a tray of blondies into Julian’s hands and muttered an order to check the buffet. Julian, glad to be relieved of listening duty, obeyed. André, of course, was desperate to hear the story about Gerald Eliot’s murder from someone in the know . He clucked sympathetically to Sylvia, refilled her coffee cup, and motioned for me to sit in the chair vacated by Julian. This I did, wondering why André could manage to be courtly toward the curator of the Homestead, who was not a client, but couldn’t be bothered to be civil to the folks who were his clients.

“My husband is off the Gerald Eliot case,” I said to Sylvia once I had my own coffee cup in hand. I didn’t sound defensive, did I? Well, perhaps a tad.

“Off the Gerald Eliot case?” she huffed. “I thought he was just avoiding me. But his co-workers are accusing me of theft . Now they say I must have misplaced the last cookbooks, since I didn’t put them into the original report as missing, and the police are too incompetent to find them.”

“Did the police ask you about Cameron Burr?” I made room on the counter as Julian returned to the kitchen with an armload of dirty dishes, slid them into the sink, and started running hot water. “Do you know how Cameron’s doing?”

Sylvia needed no prompting. She shuddered and clinked her milky cup of coffee into the saucer. “Yes, of course they asked me about Cameron, and no, I don’t know how he’s doing. But the most important thing,” she announced, “was that the police know about Gerald. That he was a terrible guard. One time I came in early and found him here with a woman, for goodness sake! The police asked me what her name was! What? Did they think I came in and asked, ‘Whore? What is your Christian name?’” She sipped her coffee, lofted a pinky, and took a tiny bite of blondie. “I should have fired Gerald Eliot right then, but I didn’t have anybody else to hire, and Cameron Burr said Eliot needed the money.” She sighed gustily, delighted to have an audience for her tale of woe. “Would you like to see exactly where Gerald and his killer had their fight?” she asked with a trace of … what? Naughtiness? … in her voice. I nodded, and André eagerly replied that he would, too. Sylvia downed the last of her coffee and bustled out to the dining room, scooping up another blondie as she departed. Julian ignored us and kept washing dishes. I walked behind André and tried to look inconspicuous.

Except for Hanna, the Ian’s Images people were laughing, eating, and talking happily. Hanna was staring at the police ribbons and shaking her head.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t have eaten in here,” Hanna said morosely.

Sylvia cleared her throat. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have come, Hanna, dear. You should just go back to your little department store job.”

Hanna shot us an enraged glare, then stalked across the room to have a whispered conference with Leah.

“The police say Gerald and Cameron struggled right next to the cabinets. The glass broke, then Cameron strangled him,” Sylvia said in a low, confidential tone to André. She pointed. “Here is where our historic cookbooks were displayed.”

André drew his mouth into a pucker. “Very sad.” He peered in at the shelves. “What are these letters, then?”

“We put all artifacts that were related to the cookbooks in the exhibit. Cameron and Barbara Burr donated the Watkins Cookbook and The White House Cookbook. The Practical Cook Book was donated by Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington.” She lifted an eyebrow in Leah’s direction. “American Cookery was donated by the German-American Foundation of Colorado. As you can see, Eliot’s murderer didn’t see fit to steal our letters , only our books.”

Suddenly, André gasped. He tried to inhale and reluctantly clutched his chest.

“Oh, dammit! What is it?” I cried as André wheezed. He staggered and I grabbed him. “Julian! Help me!”

“I am fine, I am fine!” André said over Sylvia Bevans’s squawking that someone needed to call an ambulance again . He recovered his composure and checked the alignment of buttons on his chefs jacket. “I was just surprised, that’s all.”

“By what?” I demanded.

His eyes had regained their mischievous look; he giggled.

“Goldy?” Julian’s worried voice was at my shoulder. “Want me to call nine-one-one on the cell?”

“Goldy! Stop fussing!” André said gaily as he trundled toward the kitchen with Sylvia walking importantly beside him, steadying him by the elbow. “If you want to help, pick up dirty dishes.” As if to demonstrate he was just fine, he began an a cappella rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”

“I can’t believe you worked for that guy for a whole year,” Julian muttered in my ear. “I mean, you never know where he’s coming from. He nearly keels over, then he’s fine. Now he’s humming Christmas carols in August, for crying out loud. I want to finish the dishes and leave.”

I wanted to leave, too. Just clean up and then you can clear out , my inner voice commanded. I picked up dirty cups from an end table, then started toward the buffet. With the sudden disconcerting feeling that I was being watched, I stopped.

The models, their minions, the hair and makeup people, all had ambled back to the living room. But Ian Hood, Leah Smythe, Hanna Klapper, and Rufus Driggle stood at the entryway to the dining room. Hanna glared at the area where André had had his second miniattack, then shifted her reproachful eyes to me. Rufus moved from foot to foot, as if he, like me, wanted to clear out. Leah and Ian conferred, then shook their heads, as if I’d said something incredibly stupid. Confused, I felt suddenly embarrassed to be clutching a nest of empty cups.