With the least of my problems solved, I dried off and donned jeans and a sweatshirt. It was still cool and drizzly outside, so a hot dinner for Tom and me, and Jack if I could convince him to stay, would work well. I always wanted Jack to feel welcome to eat with us, but he seldom did. Said he’d been a bachelor for so long, he resisted mothering.
I opened the freezer side of the walk-in and surveyed the contents. In February, I’d made and frozen a pork ragout. With penne pasta and a Romaine salad with vinaigrette, it would be perfect.
Once I’d mixed up Marla’s butter crust with toasted pecans, I patted the crumbly mixture into a pie pan, then put it into the oven to bake. I set the table for three and thawed the ragout. It looked luscious. Finally, I located the penne, washed and dried the Romaine leaves, and whisked together a Dijon vinaigrette.
I pulled the hot pie plate out of the oven, set it aside to cool, and booted up my kitchen computer. Reluctantly, I pulled up Billie Attenborough’s menu. I had my basic moneymaking formulas for different recipes. They all allowed for some overage, because you had to, but not for an extra fifty people. I was a true believer in love and all that, but if you were a caterer, weddings were the last place you should be feeling charitable.
I stared at the menu. On such short notice, how in the hell was I supposed to come up with fifty extra guests’ worth of crab cakes with sauce gribiche, labor-intensive deviled eggs with caviar, artichoke skewers, and the two salads? Plus, would the wedding cake Julian was making even be big enough? And what about having enough servers? Well, Billie had said Victor Lane’s staff would be willing to help, and doggone it, help they were going to have to.
I printed out a list of extra foodstuffs we would need, plus the recipes that would go with those ingredients. I knew the chef at Gold Gulch Spa. Yolanda was actually an old friend who had trained with my mentor, André. She had a prickly exterior, but once you got to know her, Yolanda was a generous soul. Still, I knew she would not be happy to add more duties to all she had to do in the spa kitchen. I shook my head. What ailed Billie Attenborough anyway?
The phone rang and I checked the caller ID. It was Julian.
“Are you all right?” I immediately demanded.
“Of course I’m all right, why wouldn’t I be? A drunk crashed into the cake I’d spent zillions of hours making for his daughter’s wedding, and why? Because apparently the priest flattened him. And then while I was trying to fix the cake, the bitch whose wedding we’re doing the day after tomorrow showed up in the kitchen with a whole new set of demands, which include adding fifty people to her guest list. What about that strikes you as not all right?”
“Oh, Julian, I’m sorry. I just was worried about you.”
“And I’m worried about you, boss. I was just sitting here thinking of all that extra work Billie’s dumped on you, and wondering how you’re going to manage casing a new venue while buying more supplies while doing a kick-ass new amount of new cooking. So…are you staring at your computer now, or what?”
I sighed. “You’ve got it.”
“All right, e-mail me your shopping list and recipes, and I’ll get it done tomorrow. Plus, I know, I’ll have to make an extra layer or two for the wedding cake. I always leave the assembly to the last thing, so that’ll work. And I’ve already asked for the day off from the bistro.”
“But Saturday is your busy day there! And you can’t possibly do all this in one day!”
“Don’t worry, okay? You’ve got enough on your plate. Speaking of which, boss, have you eaten anything?”
“I’m heating up dinner now. Jack’s with Marla, and she’s going to bring him over. Tom will be home late, and Arch is with Gus and Todd.”
“Okay.” He sounded relieved. “Now tell me you’re not sweating seeing that prick of a spa owner Victor Lane too much.”
“I’m not sweating it,” I lied.
“You don’t sound convinced.” When I said nothing, he said, “All right, just e-mail that stuff over, and I’ll get cracking. I know a fancy-food store here that carries caviar by the case, and they have organic free-range eggs, too. I can get some fresh new potatoes, dill, artichokes, and haricots verts at the farmers’ market first thing in the morning.”
“Okay, listen, I’ve got plenty of pasteurized crab to do an extra hundred crab cakes, plus sauce. That should be way more than enough. You’re welcome to do all the rest. Please know I’m grateful. I’m so glad we don’t have to dump all the extra work on Yolanda out at the spa.”
“Wouldn’t she just love that?”
“No, she wouldn’t. And by the way, you’re the best.”
“Oh, and don’t I know it,” he said. But he didn’t. Julian was the most humble twenty-something I’d ever met. “Now be sure to get plenty of rest to night. Any word from the Attenborough coven?”
“Charlotte called. She’s going to have to come over to night so we can do the extra contract. But my big worry is Jack. I have to try to comfort him. I mean, he’s just lost his best friend. I’m going to try to convince him to eat here.”
“Yeah, good plan. Did they ever find out exactly what happened to Doc Finn?”
“Car accident is all I know. Tom should be able to tell me more later.”
He signed off after again urging me not to worry about the Attenborough wedding. “Just think,” he said, trying to sound jovial, “in just forty-eight hours, it’ll be over!” When I didn’t say anything, Julian concluded, “And don’t worry about Victor Lane either.”
Right, I thought as I checked the pecan-butter crust. It was cool enough to fill, so I set about picking over and carefully washing the raspberries and blueberries Julian had brought from the same Boulder farmers’ market where he’d be going tomorrow.
Don’t worry about Victor Lane, Julian had said. But how could I not worry about the obstreperous owner of Gold Gulch Spa? Victor Lane had stabbed me in the back once. Figuratively speaking, of course. Still, what was to prevent him from doing it again?
I spooned the luscious coeur filling into the cooled crust, and carefully dried enough berries to make the top of Marla’s pie both gorgeous and appetizing. Then I told myself, Don’t think about Billie Attenborough, don’t think about Doc Finn, don’t think about Victor Lane. Yeah, especially that.
But as I dropped the berries into precise place, I reflected, trying not to, on Victor Lane. When I’d finished my Denver apprenticeship to André Hibbard, I applied to work at the only catering business serving the mountain area, an enterprise with the ridiculously unappetizing name Victor’s Vittles, owned and operated by Victor Lane. As far as I knew, Victor had gotten into the food business because he’d seen the need the wealthy of Aspen Meadow had for giving parties. He’d seen an easy way to make money, and he’d taken it.
I thought back to those difficult years right after I’d divorced the Jerk. I’d gotten the house, in the parlance of divorced people, and I wanted to be able to do food service when Arch was in school or with babysitters, without subjecting him to the grueling routine of restaurant work. I thought I’d have a perfect fit with Victor’s Vittles.
Boy, was I wrong.
Victor did not like to work with food—far from it. His idea of catering a summer party was to go down to one of the ware house clubs in Denver, buy corn chips and cheese dip, several tubs of prepared potato salad, a variety of packages of hot dogs, hamburgers, steaks, and/or chicken legs, all of which he slathered with bottled barbecue sauce and threw onto the grill while he tossed packaged salads with ranch dressing made from a mix. For dessert, he ordered either the ware house chocolate cake, carrot cake, or cheesecake.