Killer Pancake

I glanced at my watch again: nine-twenty. There was still no sign of the goateed health inspector, and I did want to get the second half of my banquet payment from Mignon before things got too busy…. Nodding to Dusty, I quickly removed the juicy ribs from the grill and drafted a food fair volunteer to guard my supplies for twenty minutes. Then I picked up my coffee and walked with Dusty to Prince & Grogan.

“How is your mother, Dusty? I haven’t seen her for a while.”

Dusty snorted. “Heartbroken.”

“Heartbroken?” I repeated. “Why?”

“Well,” said Dusty as she finished her first cookie. “First she fell in love with my dad, had me, and then he left. They never got married, and of course I never knew him. So good old Mom worked hard as a secretary to raise me, and then, not too long ago, she got a chance to have a house, finally, through Habitat for Humanity. And what did she do? Fell in love with the plumber. The plumber working on the Habitat house! She was thirty-eight, he was twenty-five, but never mind! That woman, my dear mother, is gorgeous, she’s passionate, she has no idea of the meaning of birth control. So the plumber got her pregnant with Colin, and it’s bye-bye Aspen Meadow Plumbing Service! I heard from somebody that he drove his little pipe-filled pickup truck to the Western Slope, where he could start all over, donating his services to charity.” Through a bite of biscotti, she mumbled, “At a discount.”

“I’m sorry.” Actually, I knew the details of this particular story from Marla. Strikingly stunning Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, a single mother with an aging father and a teenage daughter, had become involved with the young, plain-looking town plumber. Had Sally hoped he would marry her when she became pregnant? Who knew? I never saw Sally Routt when she was expecting, because she’d gone into seclusion, and then reportedly suffered through a difficult, premature childbirth. The plumber, with his sad round face and round eyes behind glass-rimmed spectacles, had departed Aspen Meadow at night, leaving behind accounts receivable and one emotional debt unpaid.

“Don’t tell the people at your church, okay?” Dusty pleaded, suddenly conscience-stricken. “Heartbroken or not, Mom’s living in fear that she’ll lose the house on, like, moral grounds.”

It was all I could do not to laugh. For Dusty to think that her mother’s sad tale had not flowed through our parish with the speed of water through broken pipes was painfully naive. On the other hand, nobody in town seemed to know why Dusty had been expelled from Elk Park Prep, so maybe you could keep some secrets in Aspen Meadow. But at least the Routts were managing to keep a part of their bad news under wraps. “Well,” I said, “are you recovering from hearing about Claire’s death? How did you finally hear about what happened, anyway?”

“Recovering? How can you recover from that? Nick Gentileschi, head of security, called everybody Wednesday night to tell us the bad news.” She shuddered, then daintily bit into another cookie. “You might have seen Nick day before yesterday? He was outside in the garage with the guys from Mignon, when they were watching for those stupid demonstrators. He was, like, crying and all on the phone,” she went on. “Nick really thought a lot of Claire. Everybody did, actually. You could talk to her, and she was so enthusiastic about the products…. Anyway, he said it was a hit-and-run and they were going to step up the security police patrols of the parking garage, to look for careless drivers. I’m thinking, like, it’s a little late for that. You know?”

I thought of Julian sobbing in my arms. Maybe Nick Gentileschi and I could have a little chat. After I got my check, of course.

“Dusty?” I said suddenly. “Do you want to have lunch?”

To my dismay, she became embarrassed. We were standing awkwardly in the mall hallway outside the Prince & Grogan entrance. “You want to have lunch with me? Why? You mean as part of the food fair?”

“Sure. I have a friend in the hospital across the street—” This wasn’t coming out right. And I need to pass the time before visiting hours? And I want to know what’s really going on at that cosmetics counter? What kind of problems does the department store have, exactly? No, those explanations wouldn’t wash. “I have a friend in the hospital across the street, and she loves fattening food but can’t have any.” I stopped to think. How much cash did I have? For all my worry about money, I carried little beyond a single credit card and an emergency hundred-dollar bill. Dusty was looking at me with raised, perfectly plucked eyebrows. Her eyeshadow this morning gleamed like the hummingbirds in Tom’s garden.

“You’re going to eat for your friend?” she asked. “That is radical, I’ve never heard of being sympathetic like that, I’m like, totally blown away—”