"I'm calling a press conference later in the day to go : into the specifics." He grinned. Quill told herself his teeth were not pointed; it was merely an illusion of the light. "But if anyone here in this room objects, I want to tell you this. A lot of people have tried to take me down before." He lowered his head, thrust out his jaw, and repeated in a stagy rumble, "Yes, they've tried to kill me." There was a kind of swell around the table as if some mammoth Moby-Dick were about to rise from beneath an ominously still ocean.
"You don't mean that, Verger," Birdie said.
Taylor raised his eyebrows in exaggerated surprise. "You don't believe it. Sure. I can read you. Don't think I can't. You think I would have come as far as I have if I couldn't read you all like a book? Hunh!" He made a sound that managed to be expressive of contempt, lofty amusement, and menace all at once. "Yep-per," he said cockily. "They tried to beat me. Bankrupt me. Run me out of town. Me! I don't take this kind of bulls hit lightly, ladies and gentlemen. Not from the press, not from my so-called colleagues in banking. Not from the goddamned Supreme Court of the United States of America. Not from..." He rolled his eye upward. "Anyone."
"Do get to the point, Verger," Birdie said tartly. "What are you planning on doing with these buildings?
"Miss Quilliam'll tell you that. I just wanted you to know - you don't like it - you can lump it. I just wanted you to know."
"Verg?" Ernst Kolsacker looked at his watch. "The helicopter's on its way. The freeway's backed up again, and you'll miss the Concorde if you don't fly to the airport." He looked mildly exasperated. "I told you Miss Quilliam had agreed to take care of this."
"You wanna see something done right, you do it yourself, Ernst." His eyes swept the room in a menacing way. "You all got what I just said. You listen to this broadie here and take it like troopers. Quill? You stay here and take care of any questions. 'Kay? All right?"
He turned to Franklin Carmichael and said "Frank? We got all this covered?" Franklin jumped, slapped his hand against his breast pocket, found it empty of a cigarette pack, and pulled out another piece of nicotine gum from his pants pocket. He popped the foil packet, tossed the small square into his mouth, and began to chew.
Verger clapped his hand heavily on Franklin's shoulder. "Good man!" He thrust his thumb up in triumphant farewell. He turned and went through the door, Franklin Carmichael in his wake like an obedient tug. Ernst Kolsacker stood aside and closed it softly after them. He then pulled up the chair Taylor had dragged away from the table and sat down. There was a brief hesitation, then a babble of noise broke out.
Linda's face was pale. "He's going to evict us."
Quill nodded, tremendously relieved not to have to actually say it.
"He dares?" Chef Jean Paul rose to his feet with a shriek. "This pig. This swine! This vache stupide has bought my kitchens! And he does not want me to cook? Quel imbecile!" He shot a nervous glance at Ernst and hastily sat down.
"What in the world for!" Linda wailed. "Why? Why? We knew about the sale of the building, of course. Everyone did after that scene in Le Nozze. But to fire us all? Why, what in the name of goodness is he going to do with all the equipment?"
They all looked at her. Quill rubbed the back of her neck. She coughed slightly. Ernst Kolsacker was looking at her with a slight smile. She sent him an appealing glance and the smile broadened. Not for the first time since she had come to Florida, Quill felt she was a pawn in some lunatic chess game. She got to her feet. "I want to assure you that Mr. Taylor - " she began. She cleared her throat. "Mr. Taylor has apparently purchased just the institute's buildings. Not," she said hastily, "the program or anything like that. The Florida Institute for Fine Food is still a... a... viable entity." Two of the kitchen chefs eased back into their seats. Heartened, Quill continued, "You don't exist because of this building. This building exists because of you." Without realizing it, she held up her hand for silence. It seemed to work. The outbreak of noise quieted. "I've been thinking about it. You clearly have a wonderful place here, with loyal staff and dedicated students, and why can't your board of directors find another facility-maybe even nicer than this one - where you can all run the program in peace?" She sat down, slightly breathless.
"Do you know how much a facility like this costs, Miss Quilliam?" asked Birdie coolly. "It's a nice idea, but really, dear. This is a four-or five-million-dollar plant at least."
"But it's profitable, Birdie." Bea looked alert. "And I must say, it would be nice to have a little more control over things."
"But what is he going to do with this building?" shouted the manage a gare.
"Well, um..." Quill looked again at Ernst Kolsacker. He shook his head sympathetically. "He's going to bring the Southern Fried people in. In sort of a training center."
"Fried food!" shrieked the salad chef. "Fast fried food?"
"I will not give up my kitchen to such. Me? Non!" roared Chef Jean Paul. "I will kill this son of a sea cock. This bastard. This canaille."
"You don't think. Birdie and Bea, that we could find another building for everyone?" Quill said. "I mean, it's profitable, surely?" She raised her eyebrows at Linda Longstreet.
"Profitable," said Linda. "Well." She twisted a piece of tissue her hands and bit her lip. "On a month-to-month basis it's profitable, yes. But overall..."
"What does that mean?" Quill asked in a nonconfrontational way.
Birdie's eye sharpened. "Yes, Linda. Tell us now, if you please. When we convene every month, we look at cash flow, receivables, and that sort of thing. But come to think if it, we haven't seen a balance sheet all year - have we, Bea?"
"No, we haven't, Birdie. Tell us, dear - just what is the outstanding debt?"
Linda told them. There was a glum silence.
"It was pledged against the equity in the building, of course," said Linda.
Ernst gave a snort.
"But the Institute doesn't own the building, does it?" asked Quill. "I'm a little confused here."
"The building was mortgaged through Florida First," said Linda.
"Verger's bank," said Bea, in an aside to Quill. "And Florida First pledged the loans the Institute it- self took out against the equity in the building."
"Pledged?" Quill frowned. "You mean that the loan to your institute was secured against the equity in the building?"
"No. I'm afraid not. There was an assumption that if we needed money, there'd be enough equity to cover our debt, so it was really just a handshake deal." She turned to the stunned onlookers. "The man at the bank said it would be fine. And not to worry about it."
"But is that legal?" Quill asked. She looked at Ernst. His face was an impassive mask. After a moment he said, "Yes. It's legal."
"How can undisclosed debt be legal?" Quill demanded.
Ernst smiled. "Oh, I think you'll find it's disclosed, all right. Nobody's tried to hide anything. When we bought the building, there were no legal liabilities attached - other than the balance of the mortgage, which Taylor Inc. paid off, of course."
"So we're all out of a job?" Linda asked steadily. "Is that what this means?"
"Verger would like you all to stay on until the end of the week."
"Not me," Linda said bitterly. "He fired me right now." To everyone's intense discomfort, Linda burst into tears.
"Everyone else," Ernst continued, "is to stay on. We have two famous guests with us-Chef Quilliam and her sister, who's a well-known artist-and we wouldn't want any bad publicity to interfere with events going on this week. Isn't that right, Miss Quilliam?"
"She," Chef Jean Paul blurted, red-faced, "she is interested only in the saving of Chef Meg. For the star, you understand. I say pah! and pah! again to this." He spat impressively on the floor.
"This means you'll stay the week?" Ernst said.
"For what? For what do I stay this week? I walk out on this week."
"For a decent severance package. I can talk Verger into that much."
Chef Jean Paul spat on the floor once more, then said, "I demand a month, me. And for my friends, two weeks."
"Hey!" Chef Brian leaped to his feet. "How come you get a month's worth of pay and we get two weeks?"
"Because I am the master, you scum!" Ernst spread his hands in a gesture of conciliation. "Tell you what, guys. Come up here and we'll talk it over."
The six chefs clustered around Ernst like cabbage flies on new peas.
Quill was shaken. "I wish," she murmured to Bea, "I'd never heard of Tiffany Taylor, that'd I'd never accepted this project, that I'd never heard of Palm Beach, and that Florida didn't exist."
Bea patted her hand in a sympathetic way and said briskly, "Well dear, you did, and it does. What are you going to do now?"
"Find Meg, I suppose, and carry on."
"Good girl." She raised her voice. "Ernst!"
"Yes, Bea."
"You can tell Verger from me that this move may be a profitable one, but it is heartless, heartless. These are my friends - Chef Jean Paul, Chef Brian, Linda, and the rest. Taylor has summarily put them out of a job and like many such tactics in the business world, I disapprove. I highly disapprove."
Impulsively Quill applauded.
Linda Longstreet looked at Bea with damp eyes. "Does this mean that you and Mrs. Goldwyn and Mrs. McIntyre will help us find a new building?"
"I doubt it, Ms. Longstreet. We'd do far better to take that investment and buy a few more shares of Taylor Incorporated. Ernst? Will you see to that? Quill? You look..." She paused and regarded Quill quizzically. "A little dismayed. This is how you keep wealth, my dear. By hanging tough. Sentiment should never enter into it, or so my dearest Charles always told me. Birdie!"
"Yes, Bea."
She nodded majestically. "We are going in search of Chef Meg. I have always wanted to learn how to jug a hare."
-7-
"This is rabbit," meg said to the assembled students, "is not a rabbit but an American hare, which means that the meat is all white. As you can see, it weighs around... " She stopped, pursed her lips, and placed the soft limp body on the scale. "Eleven pounds, two ounces." She looked up sternly. She was wearing her toque and her dress-whites trousers and tunic. There were seven students standing around the butcher block table in the center of the chacuterie kitchen. They were all wearing white jackets and the starched white berets that distinguished the cooking students from the chefs. One of them stood apart from the others: a tall, slim woman with a calm, beautiful face. Her hair was a silvery gray and she was graceful, attentive, quiet. Quill was reminded of the scene from Galsworthy's Indian Summer of a Forsyte, with the beautiful Irene coming across the grass: the spirit of beauty in a twentieth century kitchen in Palm Beach. Two things to paint here, then: the sky over the sea before a hurricane and Cressida Houghton. Tiffany Taylor stood closest to her, a neon light next to a glowing candle. There were lines around Tiffany's mouth that Quill hadn't noticed before.
"Test the age of the hare by turning the claws sideways," Meg said, demonstrating. "The claws should not crack. If they do, the hare is old. The ears should be soft, bend easily, and the animal itself should have a short body and long legs." She set the hare aside and reached to the overhead beam, where four animals hung pathetically by their hind legs. "These hares have been hanging for twenty-four hours. They can hang for as long as four days, but if the hind legs are not stiff when you take them down, throw the animal out. You're risking tularemia. Sometimes called rabbit fever, this is a bacterially based flu."
"My goodness," said Bea. "That poor bunny looks so innocent, Birdie."
"It's a hare, Bea, not a bunny." Birdie intercepted a glare from Meg. "Now hush."
"You know a chef by her knives," Meg said. She held up a long, thin boning knife, its edge honed to a dangerous sharpness. "We will prepare this hare for marinating." She drew on a pair of rubber gloves and began to dress the hare. The lights flickered off and then on again. Meg held the knife up for a moment, cursed fluently, then set to, once it appeared the power was going to remain on. She sliced the skin of the front and hind legs away from the joint; tied the hind feet together with kitchen string and peeled the skin off the hind legs, body, and forelegs. "Just like turning a glove inside out," she said cheerfully.
Quill turned away to inspect the kitchen; Meg's next step was to sever the head, remove the intestines, and wash the carcass with vinegar water. One of the women standing at the table looked a little green, but she steadied herself and managed to look attentive as Meg carefully sliced around the heart and the liver.
Cressida Houghton, seeming to glide rather than walk, came to Quill as she was looking critically at a sixty-gallon stock pot. "I'm Cressida Houghton," she said, extending a slender hand.
Quill couldn't think of a thing to say Of course you are! Would seem too hearty. Oh really? Seemed impertinent. "I'm Sarah Quilliam."
"I have two of your iris sketches. They're wonderful."
Quill blushed, unable to respond to praise of her work, as usual.
"The essentials of a marinade," Meg said loudly, "are that of any basic stock: celery, carrots, onions, bay leaf, parsley, vinegar, and water. The choice of your curing agent - vinegar - is critical to the success of the dish."
"Your sister... marvelous," said Cressida Houghton. "I must get back. But the boys and I would love it if you would come out to my house for dinner this evening. Say at seven-thirty for drinks? Then dinner? And perhaps a few hands of bridge?"
White Queen to King Four? Quill sighed. This game was getting murkier and murkier. "We'd love to," she said. "Thanks."
"It's the first place off your left as you come over our little bridge into Hobe Sound. Number four."
She drifted back to the butcher block table. Everyone in Cressida's orbit - except, Quill noted with a sudden stab of fondness, Meg herself - was so aware of her presence that their attention was almost tangible. Tiffany, with a discontented pout, signaled to Quill with one finger. Quill held up a hand in response and slipped out the door. She would wait until Meg's class was over to let Tiffany know how things stood.
With more than half an hour until Meg's class broke for lunch, Quill was somewhat at loose ends. There wasn't time enough to take the Mercedes out for a little run (the speedometer went to two-twenty, and Quill had been dying to find a quiet road and discovered how the car handled at high speeds), and it was too much time to sit and do nothing, unless she had something to read. She recalled that the institute had a small library of cookbooks next to the administrative offices, and she decided to look up old recipes for potted rabbit. Meg was always interested in new ingredients for her marinades - although the one with which she hoped to earn the third star seemed unsurpassable to Quill. Even she didn't know the basic curing ingredient, but she had a hunch it was very old brandy, from a comment John had made about the liquor bills in the past few months.