Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

I sidled over to where Ian sat alone nursing a cup of coffee and smoking a cigar, his back to the mountains. Every now and then he turned his shoulder to send a stream of smoke over the creek.

“Hi there,” I said happily, instead of asking: If you really care about the environment, what’s that thing in your mouth? “Can we talk?”

He glanced behind me to see if anyone was watching. Suddenly paranoid, I looked around myself. Leah, Rustine, Yvonne, Bobby, and the day-contractors were still on the deck, but no one appeared interested in us. Ian inhaled, bobbed his chin, and exhaled out of the side of his mouth. “Heard you need something from me.” He dabbed at his gray moustache. “Is there a problem?”

“Ah, no.” I sat down. Was Ian acting defensive, or was it my imagination? “Well, actually, yes. It’s about who’s doing the catering for the Soiree.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he snorted. “What do I look like, Court TV? You catered it last year.”

“Just give me five minutes,” I promised. “Maybe less. If you knew monkey business was going on, monkey business that might get into the paper, say, wouldn’t you want to prevent it?”

He took his cigar out of his mouth to sip his coffee. “I’ve got competitors in Phoenix and Miami and New York who are breathing down my neck. I’ve got real estate development all through the mountain area threatening wildlife migration that I’ve tried to protect for over a decade.” He squinted at me. “And you’re dangling bad press in front of me? Am I going to be sorry I let you come here today? Your food isn’t that good, if you want to know the truth. The chicken has too much red pepper and the rice tastes like dirt.”

I stared at his barely touched plate. “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy the meal,” I said softly, while thinking, If you’d lay off the stinky cigars, your taste buds would work . “I’m not going to the newspaper. But catering is my livelihood, even if today’s meal isn’t to your liking. Listen, Craig Litchfield is doing free parties for two of the three women judging the tasting party, in exchange for their vote.”

“And you’re sure of this.”

“He offered to do a free party for Leah, until she told him she wasn’t voting.” I steeled myself. “Weezie Harrington and Edna Hardcastle both canceled me out of catering their parties after Litchfield said he could do them at no charge, I firmly believe.”

“But it’s not as if you weren’t trying to bribe them. It’s just that the damn price was different. Right?”

I took a deep breath. What did Leah see in this person? What had it been like for André to work for him? “I wasn’t—”

Ian stubbed out his cigar and again glanced along the deck. “Listen, I’d do anything to try to save the elk in this state.”

“I realize that—”

He stood up. “Don’t drag me into your stupid squabble over who caters the damn fund-raiser. The other guy won the booking. Live with it.” He grinned. “Suck it up, caterer.” And with that he strode off the deck.

Wow, was that fun , I thought sourly.

Julian and Boyd had cleared the plates and were working inside. I picked up the mostly empty platters. A mass of red pepper flakes speckling the coq au vin sauce gave me pause. A closer inspection showed the flakes were not in the sauce, but on top of the last chicken breast; they had been dumped on. For heaven’s sake, Ian had been right. The only condiments we’d placed on the tables had been salt and pepper. The strawberry-sugar-snap-pea salad appeared okay. My examination of the rice revealed more foreign flakes, this time very thin and orange and brown. Only it wasn’t dirt. My experience with Arch’s aquariums told me this was fish food. What the heck?

I didn’t have time to find out what was going on. There was a loud crash inside the cabin, accompanied by an unearthly scream of pain. I dropped the platter and ran to the window as more howling erupted. I squinted through the wavy glass. One of the flats had broken loose from its clamp. It had crashed to the floor, with Leah underneath. For one ghastly moment, I saw Leah’s blood-covered face. No , I thought, no. Please God , I prayed, no .

By the time I got inside, Boyd was commanding Julian to help him lift the heavy flat. When Boyd saw me, he shook his head.

Chapter 19

“What happened?” I demanded of Rustine, who didn’t reply.

“Help us!” Julian yelled at Rufus. Bobby Whitaker stood to one side, seemingly paralyzed. Rufus and Ian ran to the far side of the flat and lifted at Boyd’s command.

“Don’t touch anything!” Boyd commanded.

Leah’s body was inert. She was breathing, but her entire right side appeared unnaturally folded. Her arm stuck out at a cruel angle; her leg wouldn’t move. She cried and moaned. Ian knelt down beside her and began to murmur words of comfort. Boyd snapped open his mobile to call an ambulance.

I looked at the flat. Secured by an A-clamp to a pole that extended between the floor and ceiling, I couldn’t understand how it could suddenly come loose. Just at that moment? To hurt someone? It seemed very odd. Or very convenient?

Boyd ordered me to bring clean, damp cloth napkins to wipe the blood off Leah’s face. Meanwhile, he gently checked her for shock and broken bones. When the E.M.S. arrived twenty minutes later, the paramedics shooed everyone away from her, then took great care getting her on a stretcher and across the creek to their vehicle. As suddenly as the crisis had developed, it was over. I asked one paramedic how she looked, and his tight-lipped answer was something along the lines of We can’t say .

Boyd quietly told me he was going to examine the flat and the clamps to see if there was any evidence this was anything besides an accident. Rufus had already informed Boyd that flats occasionally came loose, but that this was the first time in a while one had actually fallen on somebody. Feeling disoriented, I walked back out to the deck and picked up the platter I had dropped. In the kitchen, I showed Julian the pepper-flake and fish-food additions and asked if he’d seen anything suspicious going on out at the tables.

Julian’s face was dismayed. “No, nothing. Sabotage. Unbelievable.”

I told him that I had suspected the same thing had happened with André. Maybe he had caught the saboteur?

“Maybe,” Julian mused. “Or maybe it’s just somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

When Boyd came out to the kitchen, he said he could see nothing that would indicate someone had jerry-rigged the clamps or the flat. He even wondered if Leah had been trying to move it, as the flat had fallen on her front rather than her back. As usual, he said, no one had seen anything.

I sighed. Julian showed Boyd the platters of tainted food. He shook his head. “Cover them up and I’ll take them down to the department. I’ll see if the guys in the lab have any free time to analyze ‘em.”

When we left, Hanna seemed subdued and far from her usual bossy self. So much for dealing with idiosyncrasies, I reflected. She said she would see us Friday morning unless the equipment could not be fixed. Leah’s job of casting for the auditions was largely past, and she could manage all the details. Coffee break, lunch, all right? she asked. With any luck, that would be their last day. I nodded and tucked Andre’s bills and menus under my arm. Two more days to figure out what was really going on at this place.

On the drive home, Julian fell asleep. Quietly, I asked Boyd if he’d be willing to talk about the people at the cabin or its history. He nodded. Remembering the bitterness in Hanna’s tone when she’d visited me in the kitchen, I told him I was wondering about Hanna Klapper. Her parents had owned the Swiss Inn, now apartments. She was in dire financial straits because of her divorce. But what I didn’t know, I said, was if there was any history between Hanna and Gerald Eliot.