Diane Davidson - Prime Cut

Buffet Lunh MERCIFUL MIGRATIONS CABIN BLUH SPRUCE, COLORADOMONDAY, AUGUST 18

Models’ Mushroom Soup

Asian Spring Rolls

Savory Florentine Cheesecake

Endive, Radicchio, and Arugula with Red Wine-Pear Vinaigrette

Honeydew and Raspberries

Parker House Rolls, Cornbread Biscuits, Sourdough-Thyme Baguettes

Burnt Sugar Cake, Whipped Cream

Sparkling Water, Fruit Juices, Coffee, Tea

Five-star Praise for the

Nationally Bestsellins Mysteries

of Diane Mott Davidson

“The Julia Child of mystery writers.”— Colrado Springs Gazette Telegraph

“Mouthwatering.”— The Denver Post

“Delicious … sure to satisfy!”—Sue Grafton

“If devouring Diane Mott Davidson’s newest whodunit in a single sitting is any reliable indicator, then this was a delicious hit.”—— Los Angeles Times

“You don’t have to be a cook or a mystery fan to love Diane Mott Davidson’s books. But if you’re either—her tempting recipes and elaborate plots add up to a literary feast!”— The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Mixes recipes and mayhem to perfection.”— Sunday Denver Post

“Davidson is one of the few authors who has been able to seamlessly stir in culinary scenes without losing the focus of the mystery … [she] has made the culinary mystery more than just a passing phase.”— Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale

“Goldy and her collection of friends and family continue to mix up dandy mysteries and add tempting recipes to the readers’ cookbooks at the same time.”— The Dallas Morning News

Also by

Diane Mott DavidsonCatering to Nobody

Dying for Chocolate

The Cereal Murders

The Last Suppers

Killer Pancake

The Main Corpse

The Grilling Season

Tough Cookie

Sticks & Scones

Chopping Spree

In loving memory

of Ann Ripley Blakeslee

1919–1998

Wonderful teacher, brilliant writer, unfailing friend

They shall perish, but you [Lord] will endure;

they all shall wear out like a garment;

as clothing you will change them,

and they shall be changed;

But you are always the same,

and your years will never end.

PSALM 102: 26-27

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to acknowledge the help of the following people: Jim, Jeff, J.Z., and Joe Davidson; Kate Miciak, a fabulous editor; Sandra Dijkstra, a superb agent; Susan Corcoran, an outstanding publicist; Amanda Powers, a brilliant factotum; the great Lee Karr and the wonderful group that assembles at her home; John William Schenk, a wonderful chef and teacher; Karen Johnson, who fuels the author with truffles and culinary information; Thorenia West, who came up with the idea for this project and allowed the author to work in her domain; Meiko Catron, a phenomenal artistic director; all the talented people at Independence Pass Productions: Kit De Fever, Larraine Todd, Evan Waters, Errol Hamilton, Ludovic Chatelain, Levente, and Greg Griner; Aaron Bixby, for sharing insights; Katherine Goodwin Saideman, for her diligent reading of the manuscript; Ellen Shea, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Richard Staller, D.O., Elk Ridge Family Physicians; Sergeant Robert Knuth; Carol Devine Rusley; Triena Harper, assistant deputy coroner, Jefferson County, Colorado; Jim Dullenty of the Rocky Mountain House in Hamilton, Montana; Sybil Downing, and Richard “Pat” Patterson, for sharing their knowledge of the historic West; Brian Lang, curator, Hiwan Homestead Museum; Elaine Mongeau, King Soopers Pharmacy; and, of course, for continuing to be an unending source of patience and information, Sergeant Richard Millsapps, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, Golden, Colorado.

“No woman can be too thin or

too rich.”

ATTRIBUTED TO

THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR

Chapter 1

Like a fudge soufflé, life can collapse. You think you have it all together—fine melted chocolate, clouds of egg white, hints of sugar and vanilla—and then bam . There’s a reason things fall apart, my husband would say. But of course Tom would say that. He’s a cop.

On the home front, things were not good. My kitchen was trashed, my catering business faced nasty competition, and my fourteen-year-old son Arch desperately missed our former boarder, twenty-year-old Julian Teller. For his part, Tom was embroiled in a feud with a new assistant district attorney who would plea-bargain Hermann Goring down to disturbing the peace. These days, I felt increasingly frantic—for work, for cooking space, for perspective.

Given such a litany of problems, life had brightened somewhat when my old cooking teacher, Chef André Hibbard, had offered me a one-day gig helping to cater a fashion shoot. My clients—the ones I still had—would have scoffed. Catering to models? You must be desperate .

Maybe I was. Desperate, that is. And maybe my clients would have been right to ridicule me, I reflected, as I pulled my van into the dirt lot at the edge of Sandbottom Creek. Across the water stood the Merciful Migrations cabin, where the first week of the photo shoot would take place. My clients would have cried: Where are you going to hide your butter and cheese? I didn’t know.

The cloudless, stone-washed-denim sky overhead and remote-but-picturesque cabin seemed to echo: You’re darn right, you don’t know . I ignored a shudder of self-doubt, jumped out of my van, and breathed in air crisp with the high country’s mid-August hint of fall. It was only ten A.M. Usually I didn’t arrive two hours before a lunch, especially when the food already had been prepared. But show me a remote historic home and I’ll show you a dysfunctional cooking area . Plus, I was worried about my old friend André. This was his first off-site catered meal since he’d retired four years ago, and he was a basket case.

I opened the van’s side door and heaved up the box containing the Savory Florentine Cheesecakes I’d made for the buffet. I expertly slammed the door with my foot, crossed the rushing water, and carefully climbed the stone steps to the cabin. On the deck, I took another deep breath, rebalanced my load, then pushed through the massive wooden door.

Workers bustled about a brightly lit, log-lined, high-beamed great room. I rested my box on a bench and stood for a few minutes, ignored by the swirl of activity. Frowning, I found it challenging to comprehend my surroundings. Two workers called to each other about where to move the scrim, which I finally deduced was a mounted swath of fabric designed to diffuse the photographer’s light. The two men moved on to clamping movable eight-foot-square wood screens—flats, I soon learned—into place. The flats formed a three-sided frame for “the set.” Meanwhile, other folks rushed to and fro laden with hair dryers, notebooks, makeup trays, tripods, and camera equipment. Hoisting my box, I tried to figure out where André might be.

As I moved along, the models were easy to spot. Muscular young men and impossibly slender women, all with arrestingly sculpted faces, leaned against the log walls or slumped in the few stripped-bark bentwood chairs. The models’ expressions were frozen in first-day-of-school apprehension. And no wonder: They were about to undergo the cattle call for the famed Prince & Grogan Christmas catalog. Prince & Grogan was an upscale Denver department store. Auditioning to model Santa-print pajamas for their ads had to be anxiety-creating.