Dread on Arrival (2 page)

“This painting is interesting because it also presents an architectural illusion. The viewer feels as if the space beyond the fountain has opened up. It is in the
quadratura
style. A work in the
quadratura
style, such as your great-aunt’s painting here, would be worth many, many thousands of dollars.”

Ida Mae heaved a sigh of content. That fifty-inch HD Frank wanted for the den was getting closer by the minute. “How many thousands of dollars?”

Edward kept on talking. “A painting such as this would be placed in the
giardino
—the garden—with the expectation that guests would be amused at the verismo …”

“Ver-what?” Ida Mae scowled.

“The truth. The reality. Or I should say, the seeming reality of a painting of grapes so realistic that the hand stretches out to grasp the succulent globe without conscious thought.”

Ida Mae blinked at him. “What I want to know is how much the darn thing is worth.”

Edward laughed tolerantly. “Of course you do. That’s what our enormously popular show is all about. Humble folk like you, Mrs. Clarkson, digging into the treasures in their ancestor’s attic, and bringing their cherished antiques in for professional evaluation.”

Her lower lip jutted out at a bewildered angle. With a certain degree of sensitivity to her feelings, the grip refocused camera three on the grapes, then, in response to an impatient gesture from the host, back on Tree himself.

Edmund purred, “Now, a painting like this, Mrs. Clarkson, dating from the 1650s, painted by a major artist, would fetch anywhere from one hundred to two hundred thousand dollars at auction.”

Ida Mae’s eyes bulged. Her cheeks turned pink. “Glory!” she breathed. “Glory, glory, glory.”

“But!” Edmund thrust his right forefinger into the air. “I am afraid you are doomed to disappointment, Mrs. Clarkson.”

“Two hundred thousand dollars!” Ida Mae shrieked. “Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness.” She fanned herself with both hands.

“This painting fooled everyone’s eye but mine, I’m afraid.” Edmund’s smile was smug. “This painting is a poor imitation of its noble progenitors.”

“It’s a what?”

“It’s a fake, Mrs. Clarkson, with an approximate value, I should say …” Edmund stroked his chin and swept his gaze over the piece from top to bottom. “… of perhaps forty dollars.”

Ida Mae’s jaw dropped. “Forty dollars?”

“I’m afraid so, madam.”

“Forty dollars?”

“Perhaps less,” Edmund admitted. “Trompe l’oeil is coming back in fashion, so if you wait a year so it might be worth as much as … eighty dollars.” He snickered. “Your great-aunt Cecilia certainly didn’t know how to pick them.”

Ida Mae set her jaw. “They don’t treat folks like this on the
Antiques Roadshow
, I can tell you that.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mrs. Clarkson,” Edmund said with an intolerably smug quirk of his eyebrow at the number three camera. “Let’s move on. And now, viewers, as our show here in South Florida draws to a close, I would like to remind you all that
Your Ancestor’s Attic
will soon visit the bucolic paradise of Hemlock Falls in upstate New York.” The camera zoomed in on Edmund’s face. “I am, as you all may know, about to be married to the love of my life, and I have chosen the beauties of this singular Eden as the perfect venue. We will also be offering the good citizens of that picturesque village an opportunity to discover just what treasures lie … in their ancestor’s attic!”

The tech at the TV monitor gestured for the theme music to come up.

“What the hell do you mean, insulting my great-aunt?” Ida Mae demanded off camera.

Edmund held his gaze steady and looked directly into the lens. “Hemlock Falls, home to some of the most stunning waterfalls and natural gorges in the world, is located in the heart of the Finger Lakes wine region … ooof!” Abruptly, he bent over, as if somebody had whacked him in the stomach, which indeed Ida Mae had.

Ida Mae’s outthrust chin and determined lower lip mashed up against the lens of camera number three. “All you viewers out there?” Ida Mae scowled. “You turn this third-rate show off and go straight to PBS. Let’s hear it for the real deal instead of this cruddy guy: the
Antiques Roadshow
!”

“Cut,” Edmund wheezed.

The camera panned back, to reveal Ida Mae with her purse dangling from her right hand.

“Dammit! I said
cut
!” Edmund lunged at the grip running camera three. Ida Mae swung her purse wide, clipped Edmund over the head, and thrust her pink-cheeked face close to the lens. “Phony!”

Belter Barcini hit the off button on the remote, just as
Your Ancestor’s Attic
cut to black. He reconsidered and clicked the TV back on. It wasn’t every day he got the chance to see that skinny nose-wipe Eddie Tree get his butt kicked by a little old lady, but nope, a dog-food commercial danced across the screen and if good old Fast Eddie was getting his clock cleaned, the TV audience wasn’t about to see it.

Belter hit the off button again and scratched meditatively under one armpit. His office was in the rear of his pawn shop, and it was littered with a couple of days’ take that he hadn’t gotten around to cataloguing yet. He swept one meaty arm across his desk, dislodging a Colt .45 which had (probably) been Buffalo Bill Cody’s favorite shooter. He kicked aside a samurai sword that had (almost definitely) been owned by the late Japanese emperor Hirohito. He mounded his hands over his substantial belly and thought hard.

The clip of Ida Mae’s assault with a non-deadly weapon was going to be all over the Internet faster than Belter could down a Molson Golden, which was pretty damn quick. Which would bump
Ancestor’s
ratings. Which—if you counted the highest-ranking used goods reality shows,
Antiques
Roadshow
and
Pawn Stars
—would make Barcini’s own
Pawn-o-Rama
number four in a four-horse race.

Barcini scratched the other armpit. He hated the odds. He hated being last. Most of all, he hated Ed Fancypants Tree, or whatever the hell his mamma named him. He’d like to knock that man’s block off his skinny little neck.

It might just be the time to take a little trip to Hemlock Falls, New York.

1

∼Clarissa Sparrow’s∼
Tartes Sucre

1 lb all-purpose flour8 ounces chilled unsalted butter3 ounces chilled white vegetable shortening1 large egg plus iced water to make a total of 2 cups2 teaspoons salt¼ teaspoons sugarUsing a large fork, combine flour, butter, and shortening into an oatmeal consistency. Add salt, sugar, and liquid. Work lightly with hands into a ball. Roll out. Cut into a circle sufficient to cover a nine-inch tart pan. Sprinkle with one-half cup coarse unprocessed sugar. Bake in a preheated 425-degree oven until evenly browned. “Of course, both Edmund and I have been married before, Quill,” Rose Ellen Whitman said in her soft, whispery voice, “so we don’t want a really
white
sort of wedding, if you understand me.”

“I think so,” Sarah Quilliam said.

Somebody must have told Rose Ellen Whitman she looked like Audrey Hepburn. Quill thought she did, sort of. She had very dark hair, drawn into a simple bun. Her eyes were dark, doe-like and long-lashed. The illusion was enhanced by Rose Ellen’s preference for elegant sheath dresses, high heels, and a string of very good pearls. Rose Ellen’s boutique Elegant Antiques was the newest addition to the Hemlock Falls shops on Main Street. The prices had astonished the village. The fact that her first shipment flew out of the store purchased by hordes of eager tourists had astonished the village even more.

Quill, her sister Meg, and Clarissa Sparrow, the newly appointed director of the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy were in a meeting to help Rose Ellen with her wedding to Edmund Tree. The wedding would be held two days after Edmund taped an episode of
Your Ancestor’s Attic,
which was going to be produced in the Hemlock Falls High School auditorium, for the first time ever.

The wedding itself was to be at Quill and Meg’s twenty-seven-room hotel, the Inn at Hemlock Falls. The Inn didn’t have enough room to handle the reception for the Tree-Whitman wedding, so the partry had to be held elsewhere. The beautiful old stone Inn sat across the Hemlock Gorge from Clarissa’s Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy. Rose Ellen had hired Clarissa Sparrow, and the academy’s vast dining room, to cater a reception for three hundred guests.

The four women sat at a round table made of aged oak, in the lavishly appointed wine cellar that housed the academy’s collection of New York State wines. After the death of her husband, in that same wine cellar some weeks before, Madame LeVasque had decided the best way to keep the ghoulishly curious hordes out of the wine cellar and back in the gift shop spending money was to assign another function to the space. So it became the conference room.

Quill, who was sensitive to atmosphere, had been a little unnerved throughout the planning of the wedding, and not just because the wine cellar had briefly housed a corpse. Meg was her much-loved sister. Clarissa was her best friend. And no matter how you looked at it, two young, ambitious gourmet chefs in the same small town were bound to be competitive.

So far, the discussion between her volatile sister and Clarissa had been edgy, yet polite, but Quill wasn’t about to relax just yet. Rose Ellen was a natural born nitpicker and the meeting was running on way too long. The monthly meeting of the Hemlock Falls Chamber of Commerce would start in less than an hour. She’d been Chamber secretary for more years than she wanted to count, and she hadn’t been on time to a Chamber meeting yet. It wasn’t a record she was particularly proud of.

“Nothing truly formal, but elegant, if you see what I mean,” Rose Ellen continued, “which is why I’ve arranged for the wedding itself to be at Quill and Meg’s Inn, Clarissa.”

Clare’s nostrils flared, but she didn’t rise to the inference that the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy was short on elegance.

“The Inn’s kitchen is far too underequipped, of course, which is why I’m having the reception here.”

Meg scowled. Quill dropped her pencil on the floor so she would have an excuse to duck under the table and take a look at Meg’s socks. The socks were a fair indicator of her sister’s temper. Today’s pair was black, with a four-color Mickey Mouse pattern, which might be a reflection of Meg’s opinion of Rose Ellen Whitman. But maybe not.

“I think you’ve made very smart decisions,” Clarissa said, with a set smile. She hadn’t been Bonne Goutè’s director very long—only a few weeks—but the job clearly suited her. Clare wasn’t a pretty woman, but her high cheekbones and aquiline nose made her striking. She had a natural, easy air of command and even Meg agreed that Clare was the best pastry chef in the Northeast, if not the whole country.

“Not hiring us for the reception was the only sensible decision you could have made,” Meg pointed out. “As much as I’d like to, there’s no way the Inn’s kitchen could do a sit-down dinner for three hundred.” She rather spoiled the graciousness of her comment by adding, “We keep the kitchen small in order to be as selective as possible. Just so you know.”

Quill glanced at her sister but didn’t say anything. Clare flushed, but kept a smile on her face. The Inn at Hemlock Falls and the Bonne Goutè Culinary Academy had been rivals in the not so distant past, and its late (unlamented) director Bernard LeVasque had been a master at fomenting ill will, bad feelings, and downright hostility. When Madame LeVasque appointed Clarissa director in place of her late husband Bernard, Quill had crossed both fingers for luck. Clare was a good friend. Meg was a good sister. Both women were fiercely proud chefs. Both were trained in the classical French tradition. Neither one of them could take refuge in being resident experts on exotica like Asian fusion or Guatemalan charcuterie. The potential for tantrums was awesome.

“Besides,” Meg added airily, “we’ll be pretty busy with the media crowd from New York.”

“What media crowd?” Clare asked suspiciously.

“I warned Meg that the juxtaposition of the
Attic
episode so close to the wedding is bound to attract attention,” Rose Ellen said. “As you all know, any kind of publicity is abhorrent to me, but one must be prepared.”

“One must,” Meg agreed solemnly.

Clare put her hand to her mouth and coughed. Quill realized both chefs were suppressing giggles, which made her grateful to Rose Ellen for providing a bonding moment. “Well,” she said rather vaguely, “it’s all very exciting, I think. There’s such a lot to get through. Perhaps we should move on.”

“Let’s take a second to recap,” Clarissa said. “I want to make sure my menus don’t conflict with the items Meg plans to serve at the rehearsal dinner and the engagement party.” She smiled, suddenly, a genuine smile this time. “Can you just hear the sneers if I tried to palm off our pâtés on guests who’d already tasted Meg’s?”

“It’s why I’m staying away from pastry,” Meg admitted. “Just in case Clare decides to do
tartes sucre
. As a matter of fact, Rose Ellen, you should insist that Clare give you her
tartes sucre.
She’s internationally known for her pastry. And your
petit choux
pastry, Clare, is to die for.”

Clarissa’s thin cheeks turned attractively pink. “Meg’s even better known for her pâté.”

“It all sounds lovely,” Rose Ellen said, her voice just this side of boredom.