Fatally Flaky by Diane Mott Davidson Read Free Book Online Page A

Denver—although I knew he was with his girlfriend. In desperation, I’d called Spruce Medical, and Doc Finn had jumped into his Jeep and driven out to us that night. I’d told him I didn’t know doctors still made house calls. Doc Finn had tried to touch my swollen cheek—another gift from the Jerk—and I’d shied away from him. I’d said Arch was in bed, and didn’t he want to see him?
    Doc Finn had been kind and gentle with Arch. He’d taken my son’s temperature, listened to his chest, and checked his ears. Doc Finn’s verdict: Arch had pneumonia. But Doc Finn had brought a bag of meds, including antibiotics, and we had weathered the storm, literally and figuratively.
    As Doc Finn was leaving that night, he turned to me thoughtfully and said, “Doctors are supposed to heal, not hurt.” I’d burst out crying, and taken the card Doc Finn had proffered. It hadn’t been his card; it had belonged to a divorce lawyer.
    I finished the sherry and traipsed upstairs, where I peeled off my catering clothes and decided on a shower. Doc Finn had been such a wonderful man, so thorough in his diagnoses, so good with patients young and old—the town would miss him terribly. As would Jack Carmichael. My heart was wrenched, thinking of my godfather and his dear friend. What would Jack do without Doc Finn?
    While the hot water soothed my body, I tried to put the image of Doc Finn at the bottom of a ravine out of my mind. But when I did, the vision of today’s wedding crashers—Norman O’Neal, plus Billie Attenborough with her fiancé, Craig Miller, in tow—came up. Better to dispense with them, too.
    Instead, I pondered Marla’s pie. I had pecans in the walk-in, and could make a nut-and-butter crust. This I would pack with the chilled coeur filling. On top I’d put concentric circles of blueberries and raspberries, and I’d give Marla a bowl of whipped cream to place on the side. All this would go over well with the churchwomen, I had no doubt.
    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