Delicious! (16 page)

No wonder the librarian had put this in a folder called “Commonsense.” I looked down at the letter, reading the names of the vegetables. What on earth was a mangel-wurzel?

I stopped at the card file on my way out. And there it was, a card written in turquoise ink. “Mangel-wurzels, or sugar beets, did not become an important American crop until the Civil War. The Caribbean cane-sugar industry relied on slave labor, and abolitionists looking for an alternative began to grow beets instead. With the coming of the war, the industry accelerated to provide sugar for the northern states.”

What an interesting piece of information, and how strange that the card was just sitting here, with no apparent connection to a book. I turned the card over, and on the back was another note: “There are some interesting letters on sugar substitutes in the reader-letter files from World War II. Look under ‘Civil War.’ ”

I wondered if this had anything to do with Lulu. Probably not, but I wrote down “Civil War,” thinking that tomorrow I’d look for the file. I flipped off the lights, went into the hall—and forgot all about sugar beets and Civil Wars. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

T
HE SMELL. WHEN I EMERGED FROM THE FRESH APPLE SCENT OF THE
library, the odor of decay had become too powerful to ignore. Somewhere in the mansion, something much larger than a mouse was rotting. The stench grew more intense as I approached the staircase, and by the time I reached the third floor, the smell was so strong that I gagged and buried my nose in the crook of my elbow.

The dreadful odor was clearly coming from the kitchen; how had I not realized this before? I began making my way toward the door; the nearer I got, the stronger the smell grew, until it stopped me in my tracks. I held my breath, pinched my nose, turned back toward the stairs, and raced down to my office. I needed something to cover my nose and mouth.

Wrapping my scarf three times around my head, I climbed back to the kitchen and pushed the door tentatively open. “What sprang out could not be called an odor; it was a living thing with tentacles that twined around me, wrapping me in a foul fog and spreading tendrils into my hair, around my neck, up into the delicate flesh of my nostrils. It was something evil, attacking and overwhelming me. I staggered back, coughing.

I bent over, hands cupped over my mouth and nose, and staggered into the miasma, groping for the lights. When the fluorescents crackled on, I straightened up and stood there, stunned and sickened by the sight.

No meat or produce belonging to Pickwick Publications had been
allowed to leave the premises with the cooks. The goons had zealously done their job. They had protected the equipment. Then they had taken the furniture, turned out the lights, locked the door, and walked away from the rest of it. Left alone for five weeks, the kitchen had moldered into an enormous chemistry experiment. Rotten pork shoulders oozed across the kitchen counter, and crabs lay in stinking piles buzzing with flies. What had been heaps of organic greens had dissolved into slimy scum, leaking loathsome juices. It was a vision from hell.

I backed quickly toward the door, shaking with disgust. An orange was sitting on the counter, the shape still round, the color still bright, and it looked so normal that I reached for it as I went by. I stifled a scream as it collapsed in on itself like a fetid water balloon and began to drip through my fingers. Nothing here had escaped unscathed.

I grabbed a towel, wiped my hands, and went running from the kitchen, slamming the door behind me and stumbling frantically down the stairs as if I were fleeing a fire. Thinking I might be leaving for the last time, I detoured down the hall for my coat before continuing my plunge toward fresh air.

Outside, I turned, looking back at the mansion, almost expecting to see rotting food oozing from the windows. But the grand old house stared stonily back. The air was cold and damp, and I stood shivering in the thin light of late afternoon, embarrassed by my panic. I punched Mr. Pickwick’s number into my phone, and as I began to describe the scene to his secretary, my fingers could still feel the way that rotten orange had evaporated beneath them.

“I’ll get a cleaning crew there as soon as possible.” Ruby’s voice was matter-of-fact—just another day at Pickwick Publications. “I’ll try to get them to start tonight. But don’t go back to the mansion until you hear from me.”

It was a bleak, damp evening, the kind of cold that creeps beneath your skin and into your bones, making you feel you’ll never be warm again. The sun had set, leaving dull pewter in its wake. I walked uptown in the growing dark, thinking I might find a friendly face at The Pig. Thursday would be there, and maybe even Jake.

To my surprise, I found Richard sitting at the bar. Thursday was standing on the other side, and as I watched she leaned intently toward him, looking into his eyes until their foreheads were almost touching, her ash-blond bangs mingling with his blue-black hair. So they were together! I wondered when that had happened.

She pulled back when she saw me, smiled, gestured to the stool next to Richard’s, and plunked a plate of chicken-liver toasts onto the bar. She’s famous for them, but looking at that gloriously decadent mush made my stomach lurch. I pushed it away. She raised her eyebrows.

“Are you all right?” Her eyes really were beautiful. “What’s happened? If you’ve lost your appetite, something must be very wrong.”

Richard put his hand on my arm. “You look like you’ve been walking with ghosts.”

As I began to describe the scene, Richard pushed the plate farther down the bar. “Take any pictures?” he asked eagerly.

“God, no.”

“You should have. It sounds amazing!”

“Please! I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.” I could feel the bile rising again.

“I have to see it.” He shrugged into his jacket and grabbed the camera he always carried. “Come!” He pulled me off the stool. “We need to get there before the cleaning crew ruins everything.”

He hustled me out the door, issuing one of those piercing whistles that bring taxis screeching to a halt. We were on our way downtown before I had managed to get my arms into my coat sleeves.

Back at the mansion, we raced up the stairs to the third floor, taking them three at a time. Richard gagged and covered his nose and mouth with his scarf. Then he opened the door.

His face was unreadable while he walked through the kitchen. He put the camera to his eye. “God,” he sighed, “I’ve never seen anything like this. There must be tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of rotting food here. Do you know what you’d have to do to replicate this?”

“You couldn’t.” And I couldn’t bear to spend another minute there. “I’ll be downstairs.” I’m not sure he heard me go.

I waited a long time. The grandfather clock ticked loudly; even with the lightbulbs replaced, there was something spooky about the mansion at night, and I was glad when Richard returned, cradling his camera. “It was even more extraordinary than I’d hoped.” He was walking back and forth, barely seeing me, and I knew that in his mind he was still upstairs in the kitchen, still envisioning the room. He seemed radiant, as if he had walked through an energy field, gathering electricity. I could almost smell the ozone.

“What are you going to do with the pictures?”

“I’m not sure.” His voice was pensive. “I won’t know what I’ve got until I develop them.”

“Do you ever shoot digital?”

“I’m old school. I like watching the images struggle up through the developer. I like to get my hands on them, make physical changes. It’s much more satisfying than working on a computer. You knew I started out as a photographer, didn’t you?”

I looked at him, surprised. Richard seemed so confident that I’d assumed creative director was his dream job, that he’d worked his way up to what he’d always wanted. I’d never thought to ask if he had other aspirations. “How did you end up working in magazines?” It was so odd, thinking of him yearning to do something else.

He gave me a bemused smile. “You have any idea how hard it is to make a living as an artist? I had to work my way through college, and then I got a magazine job to pay off my student loans. I was only going to do it for a little while.… ” He gave me another lopsided grin. “I think Young Arthur actually did me a favor, pushing me out the door. And, thanks to you, I might have stumbled onto something here.”

His hands were moving, framing the pictures he was seeing in his head. “I could never have imagined anything quite like that kitchen. That’s why I knew I needed to see it. It was so disgusting that you wanted to puke—well, you know that—and at the same time so exotic, so beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” I was incredulous. “You found that beautiful? It was a nightmare!”

“Not to me. It was like landing on another planet. I just hope I did it justice. I can’t thank you enough.”

I stared at him, regretful, even a bit ashamed that I could not see the world as he did. Part of me wanted to run back and take a look before it was too late. But the need to escape was even stronger.

“My pleasure,” I said.

I
T TOOK THEM TWO DAYS TO CLEAN THE KITCHEN, BUT IT FELT LIKE
forever. The whole time, the word “mangel-wurzel” kept popping into my head, like a tune you can’t forget. It was such a ridiculous word, and I couldn’t wait to find out if the next group of Lulu’s letters would be filed under “Civil War.”

As soon as Ruby called to tell me the kitchen had been “sanitized,” I raced back to the Timbers Mansion. It was midafternoon, but I couldn’t wait to test my theory.

The air smelled as fresh as clean laundry, and as I climbed the stairs I saw that they’d been swept, the banisters dusted. The ugly dumpsters still loitered in the empty halls, but most of the litter had been removed, taking with it the haunted feeling. I inhaled deeply.

I’d been planning to go right to the library, but when I dropped my coat in the office, the phone rang.

“Oh, Billie.” Mrs. Cloverly’s voice radiated relief. “I’m so happy to have found you! I’ve been calling and calling, and you never answer. Are you all right? I was afraid that something terrible had happened.”

It was touching, really, and so I let her ramble on. She’d tried making homemade pasta, with predictable results; the recipe didn’t work with powdered eggs.

When she finally finished complaining, I ran upstairs. Three days ago the idea had made some sense, but now the whole thing seemed so absurd that I was surprised when I found “Civil War,” a fat file, neatly shelved between “Citrus Fruit” and “Clams.”

The first letter was an impassioned ode to the rutabaga from a reader in Oshkosh. “During the Civil War,” she had written, “people understood that it has remarkable sweetness when roasted. But why,” she wanted to know, “are people intent on overlooking this versatile vegetable?”

“Maybe because it tastes terrible,” I muttered, putting the letter aside. The next reader wrote in praise of sorghum as a sweetener, and a third had discovered six wonderful ways to sweeten food with apple juice. The letters were spare and sensible, testimonials from a frugal nation caught up in a great social experiment. Left behind, these women were fighting the only way they knew—converting their pots and pans into battleships and bullets, sacrificing their cooking fat for ammunition. And Lulu was right there, doing her bit.

Enemy food? Spaghetti? It was a shocking idea. Everyone knows that Japanese American citizens were interned during the war, but I’d never heard about prejudice against Italian Americans. My first instinct was to call Sal, but, remembering how insulted Sammy had been when I asked about the war, I thought better of it.

Where was Sammy, anyway? He’d been so excited about Lulu, but ten days had passed since then and he hadn’t come back. All his things were still in his office too. I called his apartment and then his cell, but all I got was “Kindly leave a message, and I shall return it with all possible dispatch. Please do not neglect to honor me with your telephone number.”

I called Jake to see if he’d heard anything. “Don’t worry about Sammy.” He sounded distracted. “I bet he’s stretched out on a tropical beach right this minute, discovering the next luxury destination.”

“Yeah,” I said, relieved. “I should have thought of that. How’re you?”

“Not so hot,” he admitted. “I still can’t believe it’s over. I think I might go away after the holidays.”

“Sounds like a good idea. I’d be happy to watch Sherman while you’re gone. I could even bring him in to work. It’d be like old times.” I’d love having the big yellow dog with me at the mansion, and for a moment I thought Jake was going to say yes. But then he cleared his throat awkwardly and said, “Thanks, but there’s no need. Talk soon.”

Did his voice sound slightly strange? It was probably just me; everything felt off. I’d been calling Sammy’s house every day, but there was never an answer. I couldn’t believe that he would have gone away without a word to anyone. I called Richard, but he was as unconcerned as Jake. “Sammy can take care of himself. He’s probably doing something
for one of the big travel books. Want me to call around and find out?”