Dark Tort Part 8

"Oh, heavens," said Ookie, tapping her racket on her thigh. "We did. That poor girl."

I couldn't interpret her tone. According to Marla, who kept track of such things, Nora Ellis and Ookie Claggett had a love-hate, gossipdependent, ultracompet.i.tive friends.h.i.+p. I addressed Nora. "Under the circ.u.mstances, Mrs. Ellis, Nora, I...didn't think you'd want to go ahead with-"

"My husband's birthday party?" Her voice was querulous as she brushed the curtain of platinum hair back from her fine-featured face. "Well, I don't know what to do, actually. He's a mess. Everyone at the firm is."

"Well, um, you might want to ask him about the party. It's possible he'll think it...wouldn't work."

"I know," she said. "Maybe we shouldn't go ahead with it. Still, I think everyone desperately needs cheering up." She hesitated. "Were you able to make the cake?" she asked.

"I'm working on it right now. Actually, just double-checking here, but do you still happen to have that list of ingredients?"

"Why, yes," said Nora, surprised. While Ookie sighed and rolled her eyes and indicated this was a huge waste of her time, Nora dug around in her Prada bag until she found an index card. "Do you want to just take this?" she asked.

"No, I'll copy it, thanks." I excused myself, wiggled back through the front door, and returned with my own index card and a pen. Nora proceeded to read me the exact list of ingredients we'd already used. "Are you set now?"

"Absolutely," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

"All right, then, I will check with Donald," she said as she and Ookie turned to go. After a moment, she added, "Everyone is going to be so upset, if we do go forward. Maybe you need some help."

"No, thanks, I'm fine-" I began.

She lifted her chin and shook her blond hair in a gesture of impatience. "Tell you what. If Donald is okay with us having the party, then we'll do it."

"Uh, when you make a decision, I just need to know as soon as-"

But Nora and Ookie were already walking toward a black Hummer.

When I returned to the kitchen, I slapped my index card on the counter and told Julian the content of my conversation with the two a.s.sociates' wives. He raised his eyebrows, as in I told you so.

I eyed the shrunken Frisbee of cake, then checked my new index card with its list. The ingredients were the same. "To h.e.l.l with Nora's cake. Let's whip up Old Reliable."

"That's the spirit." Julian began creaming the b.u.t.ter while I a.s.sembled the dry ingredients. During my years at boarding school, Old Reliable had been a staple of our bake sales. To buy new sticks for the field-hockey team or fund a field trip to Chancellorsville, the day students would bring in platters of cookies and cakes that we boarding students would then slice and sell after lunch. I had a vivid memory of girls carrying paper napkins topped with huge slices of tender yellow cake that had been slathered with chocolate b.u.t.tercream icing. Those Southerners knew how to cook, I'd give them that. Maybe our school bake sales weren't on the level of some of the fancy fund-raisers we did at St. Luke's Episcopal, but the principle of "You Can Eat Blamelessly if You're Raising Money" was identical.

If we did indeed cater Donald Ellis's birthday party, I would need to double the ingredients, I realized, as I printed out my old recipe. I worked the math and wrote up the proportions, then handed the paper to Julian to make sure I'd done it right. He recalculated the ingredients and found I'd only failed to double the baking powder. Agh!

"You're distracted," Julian said encouragingly. "I can't believe you're trying to...well, I can believe it, given everything you've told me about that law firm. Let's boogie on this cake so you can pick up Arch and Gus on time."

I sifted the dry ingredients, then creamed the sugar into the b.u.t.ter while Julian separated eight eggs. Julian rarely complained, and he took to his tasks with determination, eyeing each yolk and white carefully to make sure none of one mixed in with the other. Working with him in the kitchen was like skiing with someone you've known forever. He goes one way, you go the other, and no one skis over anyone's toes.

We put the cake pans into the oven and observed the batter's progress through the gla.s.s, as anxious as parents watching their own kid ski down a slope for the first time. But the cake rose beautifully, and emerged puffed and golden.

After we'd placed the pans on racks to cool, Julian frowned at Charlie's cake recipe, or rather his recipe for cake failure.

"It really was not like Charlie to do this incorrectly," Julian said, his voice stubborn.

"Well, let it go for now. Julian? Sally Routt has asked me to look into Dusty's death. Just tell me, how did Dusty seem to you, when you were going to school together? I mean, was she friendly, standoffish, smart, not so smart, what?"

Julian turned, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms. After a moment, he said, "She was smart, yeah. I mean, Elk Park Prep gave her a full ride, until everything fell apart."

"We're talking about before the Routts moved in across the street."

"Yeah."

Julian pointed to the espresso machine and raised his eyebrows, as in How many shots? I thought, To h.e.l.l with my doctor, and said, "A couple. With some cream, if you don't mind. Thanks. Whenever I do get to bed, I'm going to sleep no matter what."

Julian's sneakers squeaked as he moved quickly around the kitchen to fetch demita.s.se cups, whipping cream, and to refill our bowl of sugar, which he had emptied. He pulled the shots, doused mine with cream, and placed the cups on the kitchen table. I sat down and, as usual, averted my eyes as he proceeded to ladle obscene amounts of sugar into his coffee. Why did he have such perfect teeth? I wondered.

"What do you mean," I prompted him, "until everything fell apart?"

"Okay," he began, after taking a preliminary slurp, frowning, and dumping in another dose of the sweet stuff. "You have to remember, this was before teachers started being held accountable if they had s.e.x with students. It's hard to think of a time when the student got blamed, but that's exactly what used to happen. Anyway, that's certainly what went down at Elk Park Prep when Dusty had an affair with the drama teacher, Mr. Ogden. Ogden was totally pathetic. He kept moaning about how his acting career was being foiled because his wife was so jealous of the time he spent on his work. Everybody felt sorry for him. Or at least, the girls did."

My stomach churned, and it wasn't from the espresso, which was actually excellent. Men could be just as manipulative as women, thank you very much.

"n.o.body felt sorrier for him than Dusty," Julian went on. "And then she got pregnant, even though Ogden told her he'd had a vasectomy! Dusty told me later that she really had thought Mr. Ogden would leave Mrs. Ogden and be with her, but forget that. Next thing anyone knew, Ogden was going to the headmaster, claiming Dusty was a s.l.u.t who was falsely accusing him of fathering her child, which he could not have done, because he'd had that vasectomy. And also, Ogden insisted, Dusty needed to be expelled because she was with child, and that had violated the terms of her scholars.h.i.+p." Julian finished his coffee and made a face. "Anyway, that lily-livered son of a b.i.t.c.h headmaster did expel her. Ogden's version of the story came out in the papers. You didn't see it? Dusty had falsely accused a teacher of impregnating her, blah, blah, blah."

"No, I never saw that. Poor Dusty. Couldn't she have insisted on a paternity test?"

Julian held up a stubby finger. "While Dusty was studying for her GED, she had an early-term miscarriage. This was while the Habitat house was being built. Then Dusty's family moved in across the street from you, and she started to work for Mignon Cosmetics. She was determined to put Ogden behind her, and she became really focused on getting ahead, being ambitious. Remember?" I nodded. "After another cosmetics company hired her, she thought she was on her way up, but that cosmetics company went belly-up. So then Dusty got her a.s.sociate's degree down at Red Rocks. It just took her eighteen months, if you can believe it. And then Dusty's uncle, Richard Chenault, joined the law firm in Aspen Meadow, and felt sorry for his niece. Supposedly. Anyway, he hired her and is paying for her tuition bills at the Mile-High Paralegal Inst.i.tute."

I sipped my coffee. "Do you know anything about this brother, Edgar?"

"Just that he died in custody after being picked up on a DUI. He got beaten along the way, but n.o.body seems to know exactly what happened. Yeah, right. When I was going out with Dusty, Mrs. Routt could not stop talking about Edgar's death. She was, like, obsessed. Then one day, she said she wasn't going to talk about it anymore, because it was making her totally nuts, and she needed to pay attention to the present. She didn't tell you about that either, did she?"

"No, she didn't." I stared out the window at aspen leaves being blown off the trees at the side of our house. "Still, no wonder Sally Routt hates the police and the press."

Julian said, "Yeah, no wonder."

CHAPTER 7.

Julian offered to clean up. He said it would help him deal with how ticked off the story about Dusty always made him feel. When I thanked him, he nodded, his face still flushed from his outburst detailing Dusty's problems. Even though the lovely scent of baked cake was a tempting reason to stay and try to chat some more, I thought it better to make a quick exit. When I stood up to help Julian gather dirty bowls, beaters, and pans, he stopped me.

"C'mon, let me do this by myself. You remember I'm cooking dinner for Marla and spending the night over there, right?"

Right, right, he had told us this. Marla was, in fact, Julian's aunt by blood, and I was always happy to see them getting together. Julian promised to be back in the morning to help me finish the prep for Donald Ellis's birthday party.

That was the thing about Julian, I reflected, as I bounded up the stairs to wash my hair. He was reliable and he was kind. And there was something else. There's a stereotype embedded in people's mind, and it runs through literature, movies, and TV. And that is that men are unemotional, logical, and a.n.a.lytical. Living with Arch, Julian, and Tom, I'd concluded that nothing could be further from the truth. Okay, so none of them was p.r.o.ne to teary outbursts. But they felt injustices, cruelties, and loss just as severely as any female I'd ever met.

I thought about poor Dusty as the warm water poured over my scalp. Everything she'd tried to have-a career, money, a relations.h.i.+p, a good education-all these had come to naught. And then she'd been killed.

A rock formed in my throat as I blew my hair dry. After I pulled on a sweater and denim skirt, I felt dizzy, and sat on Tom's and my bed. I was severely sleep-deprived. But I was also suffering from finding a corpse the previous night.

Work, business, activity, forward movement-all these were needed to help me get going again. I had to pick up Marla at the Creekside Spa, then dash down to Denver to collect Arch and Gus. And I was determined to grab a recipe booklet and look at the collection of Charlie Baker's paintings at CBHS. Were all of his recipes screwed up, or just Nora's? I wanted to know, doggone it.

I headed up Main Street, now festooned with crepe-paper ghosts, skeletons, and pumpkins. Ordinarily, I loved Halloween, chiefly because it marked the beginning of the big party season. Most caterers-and I was no exception-made the bulk of their profit during the two months between Halloween and New Year's. I already had a slew of events scheduled to take place at the Roundhouse, which was situated beside Cottonwood Creek several miles before the spa. If I could ever get the doggone plumbing completed...but I veered away from that thought.

I had already booked a designer to come in and decorate the Roundhouse for Christmas. My throat again closed up, thinking of the five thousand dollars it was going to cost me to transform the place into a garlanded indoor forest twinkling with "millions"-so said the decorator blithely-of tiny colored lights. But that was what well-heeled clients expected these days for a Christmas party, and I'd transferred the cost of the decorations into the contracts for office parties, wedding receptions, family-and-friends dinners, and ladies'-clubs holiday luncheons. So far, the only one who had blinked was yours truly, and that was because the plumbing was running me another ten thousand bucks.

When I pa.s.sed the conference center, I steeled myself to have a look, since the head contractor had told me firmly not to come by anymore, as all my questions slowed down his workers. Happily, despite the cold weather, I saw half a dozen men in heavy work outfits plodding across the ground outside the hexagonal building. Several trucks in the lot were parked at odd angles, and one of them boasted a winch. Did that mean pipe was being laid? I certainly hoped so. I hadn't had an event for the last couple of weeks, as people didn't seem to want to get married or be otherwise festive in the latter part of September and early part of October. Up until today, I'd been thankful for my breakfast-meeting contract at Hanrahan & Jule.

Yes, I thought as my hands gripped the steering wheel. Up until today.

At twenty past two I pulled into the parking lot of the Creekside Spa and eased my van with its painted logo "Goldilocks' Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!" between a gold Mercedes and a black BMW. I waited in fear for a slender, imperious receptionist to come out and tell me to move my vehicle to the service entrance! Now! This had happened more often than I cared to remember. But I still wasn't quite used to it.

I turned off the van's engine. It grumbled and shook, then sighed to silence. Across the street, Cottonwood Creek, swollen with snowmelt from the first mountain storms, surged over a clump of rocks, then flowed placidly farther on. On this side of the road, I could just make out the grumble of earthmoving machines and the beep-beep-beep of tractors in reverse. Peering to the edge of the parking lot, I saw tractors and dump trucks moving and smoothing dirt, one more example of the relentless construction that always seemed to envelop Aspen Meadow.

My skin p.r.i.c.kled with gooseflesh. This was the first time I had been alone, really alone and able to think, since I'd tripped over Dusty's body. I swallowed. Then again, maybe I didn't want to think. Maybe I didn't want to get myself all depressed. After all, I still had to pick up Arch and Gus.

Gus. The story of Gus, Arch's half brother, was what made the memories of death come up anyway. It seemed that when he'd been married to me, Dr. John Richard Korman's endless list of s.e.xual conquests had included Talitha Vikarios, daughter of Ted and Ginger Vikarios, who now lived in Aspen Meadow. Talitha had become pregnant by the Jerk, and, in a supreme act of putting others before self, had left home rather than risk destroying our family. When Talitha died in a freak car accident in Utah, her son Gus came to Aspen Meadow to live with his grandparents. With him, he brought a letter to me from his dead mother, telling the truth of Gus's paternity and begging me to forgive her and to be compa.s.sionate toward her son. Which, of course, I'd been happy-more than happy-to be.

Arch, taken aback at first with the prospect of having a living, breathing half brother, had slowly come to welcome Gus. The two boys looked so similar, they could have been twins. Following the advice of a counselor, the Vikarioses had sent Gus to the Christian Brothers High School, where Arch was a soph.o.m.ore. We had Gus to dinner at least once a week, and to sleep over as much as he wanted. At fourteen and a half, Gus, confident and outgoing in a way that Arch was not, had adjusted quickly to his new environment. He laughed and joked with Arch's friends and worked hard at his school a.s.signments. Despite the hippie atmosphere of the Moab commune where he'd grown up, Gus was fiercely compet.i.tive for grades. Gus also excelled at soccer, where he had quickly become a much-valued member of the CBHS junior varsity.

As far as my predator-bird mom eyes could tell, Arch was not jealous of ninth-grader Gus's popularity at CBHS. Instead, my son was in awe. It even seemed that Gus truly cherished Arch. He regaled us with tales of life on the commune, and was always eager to invite Arch to his grandparents' house to play games or watch movies. An unexpected by-product of all this affection was that Gus was being baptized at our parish, St. Luke's Episcopal Church, this Sunday. "Because it's important to Arch," Gus had solemnly told me. But how could it be important to Arch, who had stopped going to church? Another question for the ages.

The only problem with all this as far as I could see was that the christening was being done by Bishop Sutherland. Yes, Father Pete was still recovering from his coronary, and yes, we'd all agreed that the bishop should do the honors. But hearing Julian's stories had suddenly made me wary.

The biblical adage "Speak of the devil, and he doth appear" stunned me out of reverie. Tall, slender, white-haired Bishop Uriah Sutherland himself, wearing (yes!) a purple polo s.h.i.+rt that said "Bis.h.!.+ Bis.h.!.+ Bis.h.!.+" along with stylish white shorts and expensive running shoes, was standing next to my van, panting. His coa.r.s.e-featured face was flushed and matched the purple s.h.i.+rt. Had he been jogging? Hadn't he moved here from Utah because he had heart trouble? Was running up Cottonwood Creek Road, which rose from eight thousand to nine thousand feet above sea level, really a good idea? I didn't have time to contemplate these issues, because Bishop Sutherland was using his big bishop's ring to rap on my window.

I pressed the b.u.t.ton to lower the window and gave him what I hoped was a cheerful, inquisitive expression.

"Hi there!" he said, placing an icy hand on my forearm.

"Hi!"

"Could you move your van, please?" he said. "I can't back out." He continued to grip my arm. Did he need help? Was he having a heart attack?

"Uh, sure, I'll move it. No problem. Sure. Sorry!" But I couldn't drive the car if he didn't let go of my left arm. I cleared my throat. "Uh, do you remember me? I'm...a relative of Gus Vikarios, whom you're baptizing on Sunday."

"Yes, yes, of course." He let go of my arm to wipe his brow. Then he walked around to the driver side of the black BMW. As I put the van in reverse and eased out of the s.p.a.ce and up into the lot, I wondered if he had on one of those medical-alert bracelets, and if he had a cell phone in his car, or what was probably actually his daughter's car.

What is he, your kid? I could hear Tom's voice admonis.h.i.+ng me. I sighed as the BMW shot out of its s.p.a.ce.

"Was he running?" Marla demanded as she slid into the van's pa.s.senger seat. "Don't you think that's dangerous if you have a weak heart? And do you think St. Luke's is paying him enough to buy all his fancy duds, or did Donald and Nora foot his bills?"

"Yes, running is not a good idea if you've had cardiovascular problems, and I don't know who finances his lifestyle. Let's just go get the boys." I drove out of the lot and onto Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive. I had barely noticed the trees on the way up to the spa. But a breeze had picked up, and a sudden shower of golden leaves dappled the winds.h.i.+eld. Marla and I squealed with delight as my winds.h.i.+eld wipers smacked off the aspens' detritus. We commented on how thick the cl.u.s.ters of lemon-slice leaves were this year, how they quivered and quaked above the trees' thin white trunks. Why does the beauty of nature hurt after the loss of someone you care about? Dusty would never see these forests, would never feel the sweet-scented breeze of fall in Colorado again.

"Have you heard anything about Dusty?" Marla wanted to know.

"Not a word. Tom's down at the department now, so he should find out something. But it looks as if Nora Ellis might go ahead with the party for Donald. She's going to call me back after she talks to him."

Marla shook her head. "I made some inquiries at the spa, after my facial and before my ma.s.sage. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, so I told them. I also said you were looking into it, because Sally Routt was so broken up, she asked for your help."

We rounded a curve where stands of blue spruce hugged the road. I tried to think of how to tell Marla that I really didn't want people to think of me when someone was killed, just because I was married to a homicide investigator and helped him out from time to time. When I finally told her as much, she shook her head.

"More than time to time, girlfriend. Anyway, some of the gals did give me wary looks, like they wanted to tell me something, or at least they wanted to know dark things about Dusty or the law firm. So I wrote my phone number on little pieces of paper, and handed them all around, and said if anyone had some hot gossip, I was the one who could relay it to you. Hope that's okay."

I exhaled. Was it okay? Sure it was, I reasoned. If a bit of useful information did come in from one of the society ladies, I could just pa.s.s it along to Tom, who would forward it to the department. The grateful investigators would be happy to follow up on any leads I provided, wouldn't they?

Don't answer that question.

We pa.s.sed the Roundhouse, where workers were continuing to hop over the trenches they'd made for the pipe. I tried not to think how much they were charging by the hour.

When we were almost to the interstate, we slowed to enter the parking lot that ab.u.t.ted the garage for Aspen Meadow Imports. The Mercedes was ready. Marla paid and said she wanted us to go down to Denver in it, as it was more comfortable for her than my van. I a.s.sented, and left the van at the edge of the lot, which happened to face the office building housing Hanrahan & Jule. Inside the barrier of yellow ribbons, a team of investigators had broken up into small groups to talk among themselves or peer solemnly at the pavement of the parking lot. I shuddered.

"What do you suppose happened to Dusty?" Marla asked, her husky voice lowered a notch.

"She either surprised somebody or somebody was waiting for her. Anyway, she was attacked and fought back enough to break a picture frame." I hesitated. "It looked to me as if she'd been strangled."

"Good G.o.d."

"I feel so sorry for Sally. Oh, and by the way, remember how she said she didn't trust the police? Do you want to know why?" I mentioned the stories of Edgar dying in custody, of the drama teacher and Dusty supposedly having an affair, which the drama teacher had vociferously denied. "Do you remember this story about Ogden, the drama teacher?"

"Where were you, Mars?" Marla said.

"When the Jerk used to bother me, or when I get busy with catering, I don't even glance at the papers."

"Well. That was back when 'blame the woman' was the first thing everyone did." Marla's tone turned bitter. "He claimed Dusty was a s.l.u.t, and that he'd had a vasectomy anyway, and people believed him. That man has a lot to answer for, but I doubt he ever will. Poor Dusty."

Marla piloted the Mercedes down the mountain toward Denver. We didn't talk, which was unusual for us. I tried just to focus on what I had to do next, which was to check out Charlie Baker's artworks, to pick up Arch and Gus, and to bring them home. And then, hopefully, to visit with Wink Calhoun over dinner.

The Christian Brothers High School lies on twenty acres snuggled at the base of the foothills, just on the westernmost edge of Denver. Set up in the twenties as an orphanage for boys, the inst.i.tution had evolved into a boys' boarding and day school in the forties, then a boys' day school in the sixties. With the population of Denver and environs burgeoning in the eighties and nineties, the demand for parochial high schools had shot up. Under pressure from hordes of Catholic parents, CBHS had gone coed and soon doubled its student body to a thousand kids.

But the thing I liked best about CBHS, I thought as I turned off of the interstate and headed south, was the energetic, can-do att.i.tude of the place. Unlike Elk Park Prep, the status-conscious, materialistically driven school where Arch had spent three miserable years, the main money emphasis at CBHS was: "We Need to Raise the Money for More Needy Kids' Tuition!" To my astonishment, different parent groups and committees enthusiastically ran all manner of fund-raisers throughout the year, and ended up bringing in half a million dollars annually, earmarked entirely for need-based scholars.h.i.+ps. And what compet.i.tion there was to raise more money than the other groups! And what medals and b.u.t.tons and ribbons did they all vie for at the end of the year, given to folks who had shown the most devotion to fund-raising! The place never ceased to amaze me.

I turned into the parking lot in front of the long, squat brick school building with its mansard roof composed entirely of asphalt tiles. As usual, the front steps and spa.r.s.e lawn were sprinkled with students engaged in their customary activities: chatting as they put cans from a drop box into paper bags for the Catholic Soup Kitchen, calling to one another as they threw footb.a.l.l.s back and forth, or counting out bills from a cash box as they sat at card tables, readying themselves to sell tickets to one event or another. Why weren't these kids in cla.s.s? I always wondered. They must have the last period off, I figured. And they wanted to get the jump on parents arriving to pick up their kids. Who knew? Anyone arriving might order a dozen tickets to Bye Bye Birdie!

Marla ran the gauntlet with me. I followed as she scampered through, donating fifty bucks to the Halloween canned-food drive and purchasing a pair of tickets to Twelfth Night. We pushed through the doors to the lobby. It was as unprepossessing as the building's exterior, a wide, low-ceilinged s.p.a.ce lined with much-fingerprinted gla.s.s cases filled with CBHS hats, gloves, and sweats.h.i.+rts for sale. Four metal chairs were set up at odd angles on the linoleum floor, as if students waiting for this or that permission never stayed in them for very long.

"Goldy!" cried Rose, the receptionist, who sat behind a half wall that stretched the width of the lobby. Rose, who had to be in her late fifties, had a mop of silvery gray curls, a thin, pretty face, and enormous brown eyes that were magnified by oversize silver-framed gla.s.ses. She rushed out into the lobby to greet us. Clad in a gray sweater with matching pants, Rose had the figure of a twenty-year-old. At night, she'd told me, she taught aerobics at her church. Whenever I saw her, I felt tired.

"Rose," I began, after introducing Marla, "we'd like to see Charlie Baker's paintings, if you don't mind-"

"Oh, I'm already prepared for you." She held up a formidable bunch of keys. "Just follow me."

We dashed along behind her, following her trail of faint floral cologne that was somehow at odds with the atmosphere of office paper, floor wax, and metal lockers that stretched down echoing hallways. We walked past numerous large prints depicting saints in one or another act of goodness, and at length came to an oversize double wooden door.

Rose proceeded to unlock one of the wide doors. Then, with practiced dexterity, she switched keys to open what looked like a cage door, the kind you see in front of a bank vault.

"I was so sad when we had to do this," Rose explained as the cage door shuddered and creaked open. "But the school was broken into once, and my cash box was stolen. It only had a hundred dollars in it. Just think if the thieves had gotten one of these!" She reached in to flip on an overhead panel of fluorescent lights, which buzzed and then flickered to life. Rose shook her head before leading us into the gallery.

About two dozen paintings by Charlie Baker hung on yellow-painted cement-block walls. They were all pictures of food-that is, of the dishes he'd loved to prepare. Charlie had laughingly told me that he was a "recovering chef," one who had turned to cooking for friends and painting-for himself, for fun-after a distant aunt died and unexpectedly bequeathed him "a packet," as he jokingly put it. After quitting his job-he'd been one of the early chefs at the Roundhouse, in its heyday-Charlie had gleefully retired. But he hadn't stopped working. Instead, he treated friends and neighbors-yours truly included, since we baked cookies and pies together each year for the St. Luke's bazaar-to his exquisite, lovingly prepared dishes.

And here some of them were, in paintings that stood out against the bland yellow walls: Braised Chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s with Fresh Tomatoes and Scallions, All-American Apple Pie, Chocolate-Dipped Dried Fruits, even the Asparagus Quiche Julian had mentioned. Charlie had reveled in painting pictures of the dishes he prepared, and he always rendered the ingredients underneath in perfect calligraphic letters. Those of us who had been lucky enough to eat at his house were able to ooh and aah over the artwork, once we'd oohed and aahed over the dinner.