Between one third and one half of first dates are broken. In my experience. Most, at the last minute.
Friday stayed busy all day. After parting from Father Bobby on Route 7, I drove home and invited the Adams, the Bowlands, and the Littles to Connie's for cocktails the following night; all could make it, though the Adams had to leave by seven-thirty to join a dinner party. Then I went food shopping at the Big Y. Then I showed a house to a couple who dreamed of owning an authentic antique colonial but were dismayed by the authentic odors brewed up in uninhabited, shuttered old rooms. Then I laid out the ingredients for a participatory dinner for two based on the
Cook's Illustrated
magazine recipe for Moroccan Chicken.
Cook's
, which prided itself in meticulous analysis, bold re-thinking, and creative methodology, swore they had discovered ways to make the dish so simple that you could cook it in one hour flat. The first time I tried, it was ready to eat in a little under four hours. And well worth the wait. Next try, conceding that drinking martinis while reading and re-reading the instructions had been counterproductive the first time, I nailed it at three. I got the dish down to two and a half hours next time, but tangled ingredients unforgivablyâit didn't taste terrible, but it was not the taste of heaven I had experienced.
My dream was to come in perfect at ninety minutes, and I felt I had a shot tonight with a partner like Lorraine Renner who, being a filmmaker, was a hands on person adept at interpreting technology. Such was my dream. I took the precaution of laying out the ingredientsâhalf the spices in my spice rack, from cayenne through paprika, honey, lemon peel, onions, large carrots (for propping up the breasts, don't ask), chicken broth, olives, cilantro, etcetera. I even washed and dismembered the chicken to get that messy chore out of the way. Then I walked up Main Street to escort Lorraine back to my kitchen.
She was on the phone when I got there.
She waved me in through the screen door, held up a “one-minute” finger and said into the phone, “I'm really sorry. I would love to help you outâ¦But I can'tâ¦Yes, I know I already have three cats. And that's the problemâ¦No. You're absolutely right. The cats would not mind. They would like your cat. Or at least get used to it. Butâ” She rolled her eyes and walked to a wine jug and splashed some in a glass and handed it to me. I mouthed, “Where's yours.”
She pantomimed a steering wheel.
Wondering what that meant, I mouthed, “Cheers.”
“But the fact that my cats would not mind, or adapt, doesn't change one big problem. I already have three catsâno, please, let me finishâI have three catsâYes I know a lot of people have three cats. But four catsâa lot of people do
not
have four cats. Four cats would make me âthe cat lady,' and I may be a little weird in some ways, I may be known to drink and get involved with the wrong type”â she glanced my wayâ“and stay out later than I should, but I am way too young to be known as âthe cat lady.' Goodbye!”
She pressed Off on the phone, plunked it in its charger, and said to me, “You don't need a cat by any chance?”
“I am fully catted.”
“They come at me like I'm Mother Teresa. Give me a sip of that!” She grabbed my glass, took a swig and said, “I'm really sorry. I can't do dinner tonight.”
“You can't?”
“One of my G-D baby clients just called. They think the kid is going to walk tonight. I've got to shoot it.”
“You're going to video a crippled child walking?”
“No, no, no, not a crippled child. A baby. A baby that's never walked before. It wasn't old enough, but they think tonight's the night and I've got to shoot its first steps.”
“I'm a little confused. It's Friday. It's evening already. Won't the baby be asleepâwait. You're videoing a
baby
? Why?”
“I make DVD scrapbooks. You know, for people who are too busy to do their own home video? I take all the crappy stuff they've shot, and I shoot some good stuff myself; and then I edit it all together and they've got a home movie starring their kid.”
“Why would anyoneâ” I started to ask.
“Five grand they pay me. I don't know about your business, but if someone offers me five grand to do what I do, and I don't even have to take my clothes offâto me that's serious money.”
“I guess I'm just surprised people don't make their own home movies.”
“I tried to get out of the walk-shoot, tonight. For all I know he will be asleep when I get there. But they just offered me another thou to be thereâno way I could say no. Besides, if they like this, then I get to do the little bastard's pre-school DVD in eighteen months. And a tutor session. First ski run. Day one of kindergarten. By the time he grows up to become a documentarian with a trust fund I'll be able to buy some furniture. So I'm really sorry. But I can't have dinner, tonight.”
“Don't worry about it,” I said. “Work is work.” Then I said, “Drive carefully,” and started walking home, feeling a little disappointed and quite lonely.
I was passing Town Hall when who should come down the front steps but the First Selectman herself. Vicky McLachlan, who was walking proof of about the stupidest move I have ever made with a woman, favored long summery dresses, snug on top, flowing below, and they favored her. She has thick chestnut-colored hair with a lot of curls, and while her photogenic front-page smiles help sell Scooter's newspapers, she is thoroughly pleasing to ogle in person as well.
“Ben!” She stepped close, kissed my cheek; and she smelled so good my knees went weak.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“Just got stood up by a date. How about you?”
“With whom?”
“Lorraine RennerâJust dinner.”
We were standing a little closer than people tend to when meeting on the sidewalk in front of Town Hall. “Well, I can't think of anything I'd rather have at this very moment, than âjust dinner,'” said Vicky.
My heart soared in the general direction of the moon, a new sliver of which was settling in the west a couple of steps behind the midsummer sun. “I happen to have one started.”
“Oh, I wishâ¦But Tim's already cooking at home. Want to come?”
“I better pass.”
“Oh, come on. Spend the evening with us. You always say you're coming over, but you never do.”
“No, no, no. Friday, end of the week, you two must have plenty of catching up to do.”
She kissed me again, squeezed my hand, cupped my cheek, and hurried off to their cottage.
I watched her walk until she turned down her lane, rearranged my trousers, and continued on. Ahead, I saw two police cars stopped side by side at the Flagpole, Ollie's gray cruiser and an unmarked unit. Three Federal “company cars” whisked past. Ollie roared off after them and the unmarked unit pulled onto the shoulder. I kept walkingâmy house is just past the Drover, which shares the flagpole four corners with three churchesâand as I reached the unmarked, saw that the driver was Marian Boyce.
No sign of her partner, Arnie. Marian was alone, drumming big fingers on the steering wheel and looking grim. Her window was open. She was watching me approach in her side mirror. I stepped off the sidewalk, crossed the tree lawn, stepped into the street and along the driver's side.
“Dinner?” I asked.
She gave me a you-never-stop-trying look and looked away.
“Innocent dinner. I just got stood up.”
“Who got smart at the last moment?”
“I have a kitchen full of ingredients for an amazing dinner for two. It will take ninety minutes to cook, with luck, if you help, an hour to eat what will probably be the most spectacularly delicious meal you have ever eaten in your life, and you'll be back on the case by nine-thirty.”
I knew my girl: Marian was a woman of powerful appetites. She asked, “How would it taste with water? I can't drink tonight.”
“Not a drop of wine will pass any lips.”
“No reason why you shouldn't.”
“No fun alone. Besides, it's an Arab dish. Poor bastards haven't had a drink since the Eighth Century.”
Her generous lips began to the form the “O” of “okay.” Before the word passed between them, her radio clattered. “Hang on,” she said, closed her window and spoke so softly into her mouthpiece that I could not hear through the glass.
Down slid her window. “Sorry, Pal, gotta go,” and gone she was in a haze of burnt rubber and gasoline.
I got home to my kitchen full of ingredients. The cat was out. My answering machine was not blinking. I was standing there, staring at things, when the telephone rang. The house felt so empty, it seemed to echo. I said, “Hello” expecting a telemarketer or somebody drinking Cosmopolitans in Manhattan who had a sudden impulse to go country-house shopping on the weekend.
“Hello, Ben. It's Grace Botsford. Sorry to call so late, I'm still at the office.”
“How are you?”
“I thought I would call to see how your investigation is going?”
Why, I wondered, the sudden interest? She hadn't even mentioned it Wednesday when I asked her to talk sense to Donny Butler. Had Rick Bowland and Dan Adams fessed up about hiring Charlie Cubrero off the books? Had she known all alone. Or had she discovered more secrets buried in the Cemetery Association?
“As I told Rick and Dan I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the cops arrest somebody and that somebody looks very much like a Ecuadorian kid named Charlie Cubrero.”
“Ben, I heard that three days ago on the news. What are you doing?”
“Nothing I want to say on the telephone.”
“Then why don't you stop by my office tomorrow morning?”
I looked at the bowls of spices, olives, garlic, and wondered what was really on her mind? “Grace, have you had dinner?
“No, I didn't feel like cooking tonight. I was thinking about grabbing a bite at the Drover. We could talk there, if you prefer.”
“I just happen to have the makings of a Moroccan chicken. If you like Moroccan chicken come over, help cook, and I'll tell you what I know. I've already got it started.”
“I don't want to bother you at supper.”
“There's plenty for two.”
“Are you sure? I eat like a horse.”
“There's enough here for a herd.”
“All right. Thank you, Ben. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. Do you need anything?”
I looked over the simple ingredients, again. Last time I had forgotten lemon peel and it was sorely missed. But there was a yellow lemon beside a peeler.
“Bring reading glasses. The recipe is a bear.”
She arrived in exactly fifteen minutes. I heard the front doorbell and when I saw her standing outside the screen I recalled her stillness in Lorraine's film. She waited for me to answer the door without moving, none of the shuffles and twitches most of us fill waiting time with. Even when she heard my footsteps, she did not move. Though as I opened the door her face opened in a pleasant smile that softened the lines that slanted from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.
She looked tired. People have grown fond of saying that sixty is the new forty. But it was clear judging by the weariness in her eyes that at the end of a long week the strain of running a business that had always kept two hard workers busy, made Grace Botsford feel more sixty than forty.
She was dressed in dark office slacks and a white cotton blouse. She had exchanged the jacket she usually wore at work for a cotton cardigan against the evening cool. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and she had slung reading glasses over her neck with a silk cord. I led her to the kitchen, gave her an apron to protect her blouse, and told her very quickly where I stood on the case, minus any mention of Father Bobby, and assured her I had not run up a huge bill.
“But I strongly recommend you spend your money on the bounty hunter if he gets to Charlie first. That way either you have caught the perpetrator yourselves, or if he didn't do itâwhich I am quite sure he did notâCharlie might be able to give us a clue about who did. Either way, we do the right thing, turning him in with a decent lawyer. I think I can get Tim to stand up for him.”
Grace did not look thrilled. “So you have a gut feeling the boy didn't do it, but otherwise essentially, nothing has changed.”
“Except that now we have a chance at least of getting to Charlie first. If we do, then we head off the problem of him working for the Association.” I looked her in face. “You did know about that, didn't you?”
“Of course.”
“I figured.”
“No thanks to Rick Bowland.”
“He's under the impression you don't know.”
“How the devil could Rick and that fool Dan Adamsâa bigger fool than his father, if that were possibleâplease don't repeat thatâassume that I wouldn't see that immigrant mowing the grass. He was a foot shorter than Donny Butler and thirty years younger, not to mention being Hispanic.”
“They must have figured you were looking the other way.”
“I have never looked the other way and neither did Dad. Do you really believe the boy didn't kill Brian?”
“Yes. And I suspect that the cops are thin on evidence. But he's the perfect suspect because if he is innocent they can still arrest him for being illegal and pump a bunch more charges out thatâdocument fraud, identity theft of et-damned-cetera.”
Grace pursed her lips and blew through them. She shook her head. “We will not be party to railroading the wrong person for a crime he didn't commit. But if not him, who, then?”
I was not about to say out loud, Sherman Chevalley or Donny Butler or three of your trustees, so I said, “I don't know enough about Brian yet, and I've wasted a lot a time chasing this kid.”
Grace shook her head, again. “I knew I should touch base.”