Healthy Place to Die (12 page)

“Well, she’s not back here yet,” she said hesitantly.

“You’re sure of that?”

“Yes. I tried her at home too and she wasn’t there.”

As I paused to think, she asked, “Can someone else help you?

“Yes,” I said, “put me through to Janet Hargrave.”

“I’m sorry, she’s not here either.”

“Can you tell me where I can reach her?”

“I’m—er, not sure—”

“She’s there, though, isn’t she?”

“No, she isn’t.” The girl was beginning to wilt a little between her excessive use of negatives and steering an uncertain path between loyalty and lying.

“She said something about going to Switzerland too,” I said. “She can’t have left already?”

“She left yesterday.”

“Yesterday? That was sudden, wasn’t it?”

She saw a way to put an end to all these questions and took it.

“Yes, it was sudden. It surprised us all.”

I thanked her and hung up. So Kathleen hadn’t been seen since … well, since I saw her in the Seaweed Forest. As for the story about flying back—if that were true, she had not been to her office or her home. So where was she? I had a chilly feeling about that all over again.

Janet Hargrave knew more than she was telling me, that was plain. Of course, there was no reason she should confide in me. Still, she had evidently flown here for some reason connected with Kathleen, and it sounded as though it had been a hasty decision on Janet’s part.

If Janet was looking for Kathleen, she really wanted to find her—flying to Switzerland at short notice betrayed unmistakable urgency. What could Janet learn here? I wondered. Whatever it was, she would have a hard time finding it, or so I was guessing. That meant that she might clutch at any straw, ready to accept any help she could get.

Even from me …

T
HE SWISS ARE NOT
cocktail drinkers. As most of the guests at the spa were not Swiss, that factor did not necessarily apply so perhaps there
was
something about the Alpine air that turned the taste buds in another direction, away from alcohol. The fact remained that cocktail drinking before dinner was not a heavily attended function.

I remarked on this to Gunther Probst, who was the other one in the lounge. He was drinking Scotch on the rocks, and I was having a vodka gimlet—I only drink when I’m on a job.

A “job” meaning an investigation. … Well, this hadn’t started out that way, but if it wasn’t an investigation now, it was a darn close facsimile.

“South Germans prefer a spritzer before a meal,” he commented.

“It’s a pleasant drink,” I conceded. “Hock and seltzer water. The extra kick in a cocktail that comes from a higher alcohol content, though—it is refreshing.”

“It helps the mental processes, I always say.”

“In need of some stimulation, are you?”

He held up his glass and looked through the amber liquid pensively. “This isn’t going to be as easy as I thought.”

“Putting food recipes on disks?”

“People are doing that already, I know. I planned on going a couple of stages further.”

“Leighton Vance can help you there,” I said. I display a touch of adolescent malice when provoked, and I hadn’t liked the way Mallory had wiped away tears when I had almost interrupted a scene of domestic conflict in the kitchen. If I could divert Vance into other areas of activity, he would have less time to cause distress to Mallory. I resolutely ignored the voice that was whispering, “None of your business.”

But Probst shook his head. “He can’t.”

“Can’t—or won’t?”

“Says he’s too busy.”

“He does have a very busy kitchen to run. This place is full right now. You can see his point of view.” I was trying to be reasonable.

“The best people to help you are those who are the busiest.”

“Maybe it says that on page three of some millionaire industrialist’s best-selling memoir,” I said. “I’ve had a lot of help from busy people myself, but I get a rejection once in a while. A high-quality kitchen is a place where you can expect such a rejection—there’s an awful lot to think about and keep track of.”

“I suppose,” Probst admitted. “I guess I just like to be rejected a little more graciously.”

“Ah,” I said, “grace! Now that’s another matter.”

We both laughed and had another drink. Elaine Dunbar came in, wearing light gray slacks and a gray jacket of light wool with a silky weave in it.

“Haven’t seen you in these last sessions,” I told her.

She ordered a Campari and soda. “I’ve attended a couple,” she said. “Must have been different ones.”

“Could be,” I agreed. “Hope you’re finding them more rewarding than Gunther here.”

She raised an eyebrow, and Gunther repeated his problem.

“Our chef’s uncooperative, is he?” she said. “I’m going to be approaching him in the very near future. Maybe I’ll get more out of him.” She sounded as if she relished the prospect of a reluctant witness.

Brad Thompson came in then and asked for a double martini. He was followed closely by Oriana Frascati, who wanted only a glass of mineral water. The conversation fragmented from that point on, and we went into dinner.

Bearing in mind Mallory Vance’s promise of German dishes, I scanned the menu. Sure enough, Leighton was offering several.
Konigsberger klopse
was there and so was
wiener rostbraten.
The latter is a dish I often cook myself at home. It was Cole Porter’s favorite, and it is one of mine too. It is simple, in fact deceptively so, and requires close timing. In addition, Leighton was offering
kalbfleischvogeln,
veal birds with the unexpected anchovies;
rehrucken,
loin of venison; and
spaetzle,
Germany’s answer to pasta. I chose the
wiener rostbraten,
always hoping that another chef will cook it better and I can find out how. It was not as good as mine but partly redeemed by the Bordeaux that I had with it. This was the Fleur-Cardinale, whose producers are now buying up vineyards in the Napa Valley, where they intend to make an American Bordeaux that is just as good as its French progenitor.

The next morning, Michel Leblanc led the parade with a class in bread baking. Caroline told us in her introduction that this was one of the cooking subjects that had been most requested. It seemed that so many cooks, confident in other areas, felt that their bread was not the superior product they wanted it to be. Good bread was not enough—they wanted to bake great bread. So here was Michel Leblanc to teach us how.

“Most of us don’t like the bread we buy,” he began. “Steam baked, precut, plastic wrapped—modern bread typifies the mechanical approach, the output of a production line, all the non-human approaches to food that we are now finding undesirable and unacceptable.”

Murmurs of agreement greeted this opening, and Michel went on. “Untouched by human hands—doesn’t that typify bread? Under the guises of hygiene and economy and convenience, we are being fed this inferior product. Now we are rebelling.” He thumped a fist on the table and dishes rattled. Anyone sleeping would have had a violent awakening, but no one was. “We have been making bread for eight thousand years, and we want to go back to making it properly.” Someone clapped.

“Bread is basically a simple food. I am going to show you how to make the simplest version of all.” He waved to the ingredients in front of me and began, describing each action. “Take flour and eggs, more whites than yolks. Add yeast until the mixture thickens, add sugar and let it rest.” He pulled a doughy mound toward him. “This has been prepared in exactly that way and baked. Now I cut off the crown, pour in some melted butter, mix it well, replace the crown, and bake again.”

He slid it into the oven and beamed at his audience.

“That is the way bread was made a thousand years ago, and it is still the basic way. Nothing has really changed, but naturally some improvements have appeared. Beer yeast was the only kind available then, but today refined yeasts are used. Emulsifiers are added to keep the bread from going stale quickly; kneading is done mechanically and is more efficient. Perhaps the most useful improvement has been in the oven. Modern ovens hold a constant temperature—very different from the days of continually stoking a fire, which caused the temperature to go up and down.”

A barrage of questions followed, for it seemed that despite the variety of breads on the market, many people got a certain satisfaction from baking their own. Helmut Helberg was in the audience, and I gave another star to Caroline de Witt when Helmut said she had specifically requested his presence. A good-natured altercation between Michel and Helmut developed over home-baked bread versus supermarket bread. Perhaps it was inevitable that Helmut should have the last word by pointing out that his chain of supermarkets carried all the ingredients for the home baker.

We were late disbanding for lunch and most of the attendees at the session headed directly for the dining room, where, as Michel had told them, there were ten different kinds of bread being offered with the meal.

I took a brief promenade by the lake to do some thinking. Janet Hargrave was the person who had me baffled. She was executive editor of a magazine, and one of her columnists who had come here to the conference had disappeared. Janet had come here to … to do what? Find her? Unusual behavior for an editor surely.

If I had been a real investigator, I would have observed Janet going in to dinner and taken my trusty lock pick to her cabin. Inside, I would have prowled through her belongings. It wouldn’t take long, I thought, as she had arrived with only one small bag. I would have found unmistakable evidence that … Well, that was the way it was supposed to work. I wondered if it ever did. People’s motives were not usually so simple that a single piece of paper explained them fully. A photograph, that was another popular giveaway; yet if photographs were that incriminating, why did people carry them around?

For a real investigator, it sounded as if all the conventional approaches would be a waste of time. It was a good thing I was merely a Gourmet Detective—it meant I could be unconventional. So what could I do? Well, I could talk to Janet Hargrave and get her to confide in me. Was I being unrealistic? Well, I had one big factor in my favor—I knew more about Kathleen’s most recent activities than Janet did. I would have to use that.

The lull in the period before lunch was a suitable time to catch someone, and Janet proved easy to waylay. I had noted her cabin number when she had checked in, and I hung around in sight of it until she came out and headed for the dining room. I fell into step beside her.

“I think we should have a chat,” I told her, putting on my disarming smile.

She gave me a sour look. “What about?”

“About Kathleen Evans.”

She almost broke her stride, but that was her only reaction. Still, it was better than being ignored. We walked on, and at length she said predictably, “What about her?”

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth before.” I had decided that throwing myself on her mercy might pry something out of her.

“I thought not.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, startled.

“You said you had a date with her and she was there but when you looked for her, she was gone. That sounded like a cover-up.”

“You took me by surprise, showing up like that.”

“Go on,” she said in a neutral tone.

“It was true that she invited me to meet her in the Seaweed Forest.”

“I took a look at it early this morning.”

“Good, then you’ll have a better appreciation of what I’m telling you.” I went on to relate what had happened. By the time I finished, we had stopped walking and she was facing me.

“So you don’t know for sure that she was dead.”

“No,” I admitted. “She looked to be, but I didn’t have the chance to feel for a pulse. Then she was gone. She might have recovered, got out of the Seaweed Forest, and hidden out until she could take a cab to the airport.”

“And the alternative?”

“That’s where it gets really speculative. If she was killed, why did someone take her body?”

She eyed me shrewdly. “You don’t ask the obvious question—why should anyone kill her?”

“I don’t know the answer to that. I’m telling you all this because I think maybe you do.”

She turned half away. “She’s a columnist on a food magazine, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone want to kill her?”

“Her column’s in your magazine—you tell me.”

From the distant lake, voices were raised and drifted across the water. She looked that way, then said, “She’s a food columnist, not a secret agent.”

“If you think she’s dead, that’s not an answer.”

“We may find that she’s back in New York, at her desk and writing up a story on the spa.”

“I don’t think so,” I said flatly. I didn’t elaborate and she said nothing. She had probably called the magazine herself already.

“Do you have anything else to tell me?” she asked coldly.

“No, but I hoped you’d have something to tell me.”

She was starting to shake her head, but I think my attitude told her I was going to press for some kind of an answer. “I can tell you this,” she said. “Kathleen has been here to the spa before.”

“On business?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean something?”

“If so, I don’t know what it is,” she replied.

We both waited for the other to make a further contribution but neither of us did. At least she had told me something, though I thought she was still holding back. It would be understandable if she thought I hadn’t told all. My story sounded fishy even to me.

“We may as well go to lunch,” she said, starting to walk briskly toward the dining room.

“We must do this again,” I suggested. “Maybe a few more meetings like this and we’ll know enough to really find Kathleen.”

W
HO WAS THE BUSIEST
busybody at the spa this week? Who would be the best storage house of gossip? I needed a fink and I decided it must be feminine. I acknowledged that that might well be a typically male sexist point of view, but, to me, the female of the species is the most efficient conduit for picking up tittle-tattle, rumor, hearsay, and scuttlebutt.