Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

“We’re on,” I informed Julian and Tom. “Coffee break and lunch. There’s fresh fruit in the walk-in we can slice. We’ll pick up yogurt on the way, and I’ll make cakes on the griddle when we get there. In Scotland they call a griddle a ‘girdle,’ but it’s really just pancakes. Girdle cakes for a lingerie shoot. Pretty cute, eh?”

“I don’t like this,” Tom commented as he pulled out strawberries to slice. “I don’t want the two of you going up to that cabin unaccompanied.”

The phone rang again and we all looked at it.

“It might be Sylvia,” I said. The way this morning was going, she would be calling to say Litchfield had won the tasting.

“I’ll let you know if it is,” Tom offered as he hugged the strawberry bowl to his chest and snagged the phone from the sawhorse. After a moment of silence, he put down the bowl and pulled out his ubiquitous spiral notebook.

“Go ahead,” he ordered. He wrote furiously. “Thanks. You free today?” A pause. “Think you could go out to Gerald Eliot’s former workplace? A cabin in Blue Spruce. Goldy’s catering up there and it’d make me feel better if you’d stay with her.” I shook my head furiously; Julian groaned. Tom raised an eyebrow at me and grinned. “Sure. Come by our place about seven forty-five. Oh, wait. Could you pick up a couple of gallons of fat-free vanilla yogurt on the way?”

“I’m going to the cabin, too,” Arch announced from the doorway. “Lettie might be there. I want to talk to her about my radio equipment.”

“You are not going,” I said firmly. Why was everyone in this house up before seven on a summer morning? How were Julian and I going to get the prep done with all these interruptions? “They’re doing a lingerie shoot today, and Lettie’s too young to wear lingerie. And if she isn’t and she is in the shoot, it would not be appropriate for you to be there.”

“Call her up and invite her over for lunch,” Tom interjected wisely, while Arch was still trying to puzzle out what I’d just said. “I’ll be working on the kitchen. You can have sandwiches on the deck. Eleven-thirty.”

“I sent her an e-mail about my ham radio equipment, and she can’t wait to see it,” Arch said earnestly. “Get this—her dad taught her how to put an antibugging device on her phone.”

“Wow,” the three of us said simultaneously. Arch vanished up the stairs to shower and agonize over his clothing for the day.

Thick, sweet slices of strawberry fell before Tom’s expert knife. “That was Boyd,” he announced. “He told me I passed the lie detector test.” When we exclaimed our congratulations he held up the knife to stop us. “That only means I wasn’t consciously compromising an investigation. But I did get the background we were looking for.” He deftly cored the pineapple. “First off, Boyd interviewed that cabdriver you talked to, Goldy. The one who drove André out to the cabin Monday morning. Nothing unusual about the chef, just a lot of grousing about how he was serving more gourmet dishes for skinny people who wouldn’t understand or appreciate his food. No complaining of tightness in the chest, pain down his arm, anything.”

I could just imagine it. “Did he talk about the food being done for that day? Or why he was coming early?”

“Yup.” Tom frowned, gripped the juicy pineapple, and began carving the sides. “According to the cabbie, André insisted the food was already done. But the chef had some ‘other work’ to do that meant he needed to get to the cabin early. He just didn’t say what kind of work. As to Merciful Migrations and the historical society? The society’s in pretty good shape. They’ve got a few big donors who keep ’em going. Ian Hood’s group is another story, though. He supports most of their work with the fashion photography, but he’s been losing bookings because he’s so hard to get along with, and so many photography studios are opening in Phoenix. Leah Smythe? She’s land-rich only. Plus she works for the studio and for the charity for very little remuneration. Donations and the money from the Soirée make up the rest of the budget. According to Boyd, if Ian stopped supporting the organization, the elk would be on their own.”

“Hmm.” Would it be so bad if the elk were left to fight developers on their own? Probably , my inner voice replied.

“I asked Boyd to find out just how land-rich Leah was. He said he’d have to check—”

The phone rang again. “Fourth time’s the charm,” I announced, and politely gave my greeting into the receiver.

“This is Sylvia Bevans, returning your call.”

“Oh, thank you,” I gushed. Should I get her opinion on Craig Litchfield’s mode of stealing clients? No: what I really needed to know had to do with a murder, not any kind of theft. “Listen, Sylvia, I called for some historical background, if you don’t mind. I’m doing catering out at the Merciful Migrations cabin today. I’ve become so fascinated with Charlie Smythe,” I raved as Tom rolled his eyes, “I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about him. Do you have time for that?”

“Well. I suppose. Of course, I’m always glad when Aspen Meadow people want to know their roots. It certainly is more important than adding extra lanes to the highway, which seems to be the main area of interest anymore. What do you want to know about Charlie?”

“Everything,” I said as I hit buttons on my espresso machine to fuel myself with more caffeine.

“I presume you know that Charlie Smythe was the grandfather to Leah Smythe and Weezie Smythe Harrington, yes?” When I mm-hmmed , she went on: “Char-lie Smythe settled at the cabin after the War Between the States, which is what he called it, as a member of the losing side. Like a lot of restless army men, Charlie came west, but only after he’d scammed ten thousand dollars off his aunt in Kentucky. Ten thousand was big money in 1865, my dear.”

Julian was peeling kiwi. Tom dumped the sun-yellow pineapple chunks into the big blue bowl we were using. He picked up a cantaloupe and began slicing off the ribbed skin. I reached for the bananas. “He stole ten thousand from his aunt? The creep.”

“Yes, I’m sorry to say, and the story is that the poor woman died of grief. And Charlie was no one-time scam artist. He became addicted to thievery. It kept life interesting, I suppose.” She sighed deeply, as if she were discussing a piece of lovely china that had been carelessly broken.

“Back up, Sylvia, okay?” I sipped the foam from the espresso. “What about this aunt? She had ten thousand dollars in cash?”

“Oh, no,” Sylvia said sternly, as if I’d flunked a history class. “She’d buried a strongbox of gold coins before the war, but after Appomattox she was afraid the victorious Yankees would find them. Charlie promised to deposit the coins in a bank, and that was the last anyone in Kentucky saw of him! Next thing you know, it’s 1866 and Charlie and his wife, Winnie—grandmother to the two Smythe girls—are buying land in Colorado with a whole lot of gold coins. They purchased a thousand acres in Aspen Meadow and twenty-seven hundred in Blue Spruce. Wait a moment while I pour myself some tea, would you?”

“Sure.” I was the last one to deny folks caffeine.

“Where was I?” she asked a moment later. “Oh, yes, Charlie’s land. The Aspen Meadow acreage was to be an investment. The Blue Spruce land was where Charlie was going to have his ranch and his timber business, according to his boasts. He cut down trees, built the cabin, and got bored. So he abandoned Winnie and their small son Vic, the story goes. Charlie turned to crime, alas. He stole horses in the early years, then robbed stagecoaches in the later ones. He ended up trying to rob a bank. That’s how he was caught, in the end. He was in his sixties, if you can imagine. And then he died,” she concluded sadly, “at the age of seventy, in Leavenworth, during the flu epidemic of 1918.”