Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

THE MAIN CORPSE DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

Prospect Financial Partners Luxury Beer and HorsD’Oeuvre Party

EURYDlCE GOLD MINE

IDAHO SPRINGS, COLORADO SATURDAV, JUNE 5

Chinese Shrimp Dumplings Tomato-Brie Pie Crab Quesadillas Giant Mushrooms Stuffed with Chicken Sausage Bacon-Wrapped Artichokes with Dijon Cream Assorted Beers, Ales, Wheats, and Stouts White Chocolate Truffles, Gold Foil-Wrapped Fudge Bars French Roast Coffee

1

Sometimes you’d kill for a booking. I was ready – I’d had a rotten spring. The lack of business meant I spent afternoons frantically scrolling through my client files. Wasn’t the Hardcastles’ daughter supposed to get married? Didn’t they want me to do the reception? And what about the Garden Club brunch, Newcomers’ picnic, and Kiwanians’ First-of-Summer barbecue? In terms of scheduled events, these last two months were the worst in the five years since I’d become a professional caterer. It wasn’t just a rotten spring: It was disastrous.

The problem, everyone said, was the weather. From the middle of March until now, the beginning of June, maddening, endless rain and snow had assaulted the Colorado high country. The Audubon Society announced that birds migrating north had overflown the state completely. Drownings were up, landslides were up, catered events were way, way down. The clubs had all canceled their outdoor events, and the Hardcastles’ daughter was on Prozac.

I set aside the dumpling dough I was kneading and looked out my kitchen window. Morning fog shrouded the mountains of the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. In a recent empty moment – I was having lots of those lately – I’d read an article in which a psychiatrist claimed people actually eat more during long bouts of depressing weather. But if folks dig into whole grilled swordfish and soup bowls of chocolate mousse during gray-day melancholy, then caterers should hit the jackpot when it pours, right? Reading the article, I’d known in my heart the shrink’s argument was wrong. Now, I finally had the bank statement to prove it. I rolled the dough to razor-thinness. It wasn’t the lack of income that bothered me so much. After all, I’d been married to a man with a regular paycheck for just over a year. But second-time-around connubial bliss was one thing. Financial independence was another. Since I’d had five years of being on my own, to have my business fail would be mortifying. I whacked the next batch of dough with my rolling pin. To lose Goldilocks’ Catering would be unthinkable.

Thank goodness my best friend had come to the rescue – bless her large, recovering-from-cardiac-arrest heart. In her midforties and ultrawealthy, Marla Korman was the other ex-wife of my ex-husband-known to both of us as the Jerk. When my business began to falter, Marla wanted to extend me a business loan. Very firmly, I’d said thank you, but no. Next she offered to have a venture capital firm – Prospect Financial Partners, in which she had more than a passing interest – analyze Goldilocks’ Catering as an investment prospect. To this I’d also given a polite no thanks. If too many cooks spoiled the broth, there was no telling what a venture capital firm could do to a catering business. But then Marla had the devious but brilliant idea of booking me to do a celebratory event for Prospect Financial Partners. How could I say no? So this afternoon, I was catering a heartwarmingiy profitable luxury beer-and-hors d’oeuvre affair for the venture capitalists- – t an extremely unusual site.

I eased up on the rolling pin and pictured the venue for the party: the portal opening to the Eurydice Gold Mine. Of course, the party wasn’t being held in the old mine, but under a tent erected at its entrance. And I was grateful for the last-minute booking, even if the firm had called on me in a state of panic. No question about it, Prospect Financial Partners needed a social bash. In the worst way.

The firm had been in an uproar the last few weeks over the unexpected death of their chief investment officer. In what I viewed as peculiar hard-heartedness, clients had flooded the firm with unsympathetic calls to find out how Victoria Lear’s dying would affect their portfolios. In particular, the clients demanded, would the fact that CIO Lear was gone to that great securities exchange in the sky postpone the scheduled reopening of the Eurydice? The partners had assured their nervous investors that plans to capitalize the reopening of the gold mine were absolutely on track, despite the unscheduled demise of Victoria Lear. But chaos and uncertainty are not easily quelled, especially when money is involved. Prospect’s clients were close to rebellion, otherwise known as pulling out.

Finally, Marla had convinced the Prospect partners that it would be marvelous fun – not to mention a break from the crisis atmosphere at the firm – to do a catered affair next to the Eurydice portal. Wine and dine ‘em, she’d said, and they’ll forget their uneasiness about Victoria’s death. And she, Marla, had the perfect caterer for the occasion… . With the temperature hovering in the low fifties and rain and hail threatening, it wasn’t a place I would have chosen for a party. But I assured the Prospect firm of my ability to adapt. When the rain arrived, I told them we could make like rich Arabs and huddle under our tent.

Marla had a large portfolio with Prospect. More significantly, she was in the fifteenth month of a rocky romantic involvement with Prospect’s financial whiz, Tony Royce, one of the two partner-owners of the venture capital firm. Clever, intense, and perpetually well-dressed, Tony had been with Marla constantly through the darkest days of her illness almost a year ago. But rumors abounded of how handsome, dark-haired Tony had dated other women before and after Marla’s hospitalization. The gossip mill even worked overtime spreading a kinky tale concerning Tony’s relationship with a certain Vegas stripper. A couple of months ago, Marla had heard of Tony’s wanderings. She’d told him she’d remain a Prospect client, but her heart couldn’t take him seeing other women. She’d ended their relationship. Secretly, I was glad. I didn’t want my best friend with another jerk.

In May, however, Tony had repented. He swore a very public, ceaseless devotion to Marla. Even I was impressed. I’d desperately hoped they’d celebrate their new togetherness with lovely, intimate dinners catered by yours truly. But no.

Ever one to combine business with pleasure, this last month Tony had taken Marla to every restaurant where the Prospect Partners were thinking of putting their money. Marla regaled me with stories about this panorama of eatery outings, where she would muse over the food – delicious, unusual, or just plain weird. Tony assessed each restaurant’s ability to attract diners. After the mine venture, Tony told her, Prospect was going to diversify by putting capital into a restaurant with regional expansion plans. But when Marla’s cardiologist had heard she was taste-testing hollandaise sauce and deep-dish pizza all over the state, he’d put an immediate stop to this particular type of financial analysis.

“Tony and I are in love,” Marla had confided to me when she made the booking. “It’s the real thing, Goldy.”

“Is he going to find someone else to do his taste-testing?”

“He says so,” she’d dreamily replied. “But he needs me now more than ever. For moral support. He’s so distraught over the firm’s loss of Victoria.”

I said nothing. I didn’t want to be reminded. I couldn’t think of Victoria Lear’s death without shuddering.

An avid off-roader, Chief Investment Officer Lear had lost control of her car while negotiating narrow, precarious Orpheus Canyon Road. Orpheus Canyon, two miles east of the Eurydice Mine, snaked through the mountains between Idaho Springs and Central City, another old mining town that now featured legalized gambling. The dirt road’s precipitous drop-offs frequently claimed drivers who made the smallest miscalculation of the road’s lethal curves. No one had seen Victoria Lear’s Toyota Land Cruiser dive off the mud-slick road. It had been a week before her body had been discovered within the gnarled wreckage. There had been little forensic evidence to recover. The constant rain on the dirt road had obliterated the Toyota’s tracks. Three days ago, the Clear Creek County coroner had ruled her death accidental.