Hot Dish (12 page)

A dated yearbook picture of a good-looking blonde, who’d probably been the wet dream of every football player in her school, smiled down from the screen.

“
Though the pageant is no longer held, recently the hundred-pound block of butter that had been carved into her likeness was discovered in her parents’ barn. Evidently, Mom Hallesby had kept it in a freezer all these years
.”

An old photograph of a yellowish sculpture bearing a distinct resemblance to Jenn Lind appeared on the screen. Something about it sparked a memory. Dunk pushed himself higher up in his chair.

“Hey, Dunkovich, lean back! I can’t see through you, man!”

“Shut up,” Dunk muttered.

“The Guinness Book of World Records
people are trying to determine if this is, in fact, the oldest surviving butter sculpture in existence
,” the anchor guy’s disembodied voice informed them. “
But it’s not its age that is attracting attention in New York. It’s the man who chiseled it, internationally celebrated sculptor Steven Jaax, who’s causing the stir. Jaax has agreed to appear with Miss Lind this weekend as co-grand marshal of Fawn Creek’s sesquicentennial parade right alongside his butter sculpture
!”

The camera cut to a lean, affable-looking guy with unkempt salt-and-pepper hair. A crowd of reporters were shoving microphones in his face. Steve Jaax? Yeah. That was his name. Dunk leaned closer. The guy didn’t
look all that different from when he’d shared a cell with Dunk a couple decades ago.

“
Mr. Jaax, your last piece sold for nearly four hundred thousand dollars
.”

Dunk’s jaw dropped.

“
What price would you put on the butter sculpture
?” The reporter was making a joke. Jaax didn’t look like he got it. He gave an elaborate shrug.

“
I’m guessing it wouldn’t come out too well in an actual appraisal. It’s butter and it’s old butter, so it’s gotta have deteriorated, you know
?” he said. “
It has loads of sentimental value for the people who’ve kept it all these years. And Ms. hind would probably say it’s priceless because it is a bust of her. And, well, the mayor of Fawn Creek thinks a lot of it. He’s named it co-grand marshal of the town’s sesquicentennial. So who knows what someone might pay for it for the right reasons
?”

The reporter was nodding in a dazed fashion. Jaax, Dunk thought, was prone to oversharing.

“
You must have been pretty surprised to hear of its existence
,” the reporter said.

“
Man, I have never been more surprised in my life, not even when I found out my ex-wife, the ex-supermodel Fabulousa, was bi
,” Jaax said. “
Well, that wasn’t really that big of a surprise, so I was actually more surprised about the butter head because I’d read that it had been melted down for pancakes or something. I was devastated
.”

He hadn’t been devastated; he’d laughed his ass off. Dunk should know; he’d been watching the newscast carrying the story right alongside him. Jaax had been his cellmate.

It hadn’t taken much prompting to get Jaax to tell Dunk the whole story and why not? The butter head and the key buried in it were gone, lost forever on a rural field trampled over by ten thousand people gorging themselves on corn on the cob. Jaax had spilled about his ex, the “seminal piece” he’d had stolen from her, the crypt, the key, and the fact that the only person besides his ex-wife who could get to the statue without using the key was dead. Then he’d laughed.

At the time Dunk had been skeptical about whether Jaax was as hot shit as he seemed to think he was. Well, Dunk thought, looking at the swarm of reporters, apparently Jaax hadn’t underestimated himself. If the statue in that mausoleum vault was half as “important” as Jaax had claimed, it would be worth a pretty penny by now.

“
Mr. Jaax
,” a reporter was saying, “
you have been quoted many times as saying that this butter sculpture was responsible for the renaissance of
your career and gave you the inspiration for your resin-and-fiber optic pieces. You must be excited to see it again
.”

Jaax grinned like a rat in a room full of cheese. “
Man, you have no idea
.”

Dunk grinned, too.

Because he knew just what Jaax meant.

Same time

Portia’s Tavern, Fawn Creek

“Look, Ned, the city isn’t paying you to park that plow in Duddie’s lot here and spend the afternoon drinking beer with your buddies.”

Ned Soderberg, innocently sitting at the bar enjoying a beer with Eric Erickson and Jimmy Turvold, spun around at the sound of the mayor’s voice. Paul LeDuc stood just inside the door to Portia’s Tavern, dripping melting snow from his bomber cap ear wings onto the lapels of his black wool dress coat.

Now that Paul was mayor, he dressed like some TV lawyer, Ned thought, eyeing him sourly. How the hell had LeDuc gotten to be mayor, anyways? He wasn’t an American and he wasn’t all that great a hockey player, neither, and let’s just say some folks weren’t too thrilled they’d been sold
that
particular two-teated sow.

“Did you hear me, Ned?”

“Yup, Paul. I sure did.” Ned nodded soberly, sliding off the bar stool and standing to attention. Apparently, old Paul had been driving by, seen the plows in the parking lot, and decided it was his civic duty to spend a few minutes reaming him and Jimmy Turvold a couple new ones. Asshole.

Hell, a guy couldn’t be sure of getting a little peace and quiet anywhere in this stupid town anymore. It wasn’t like he was gettin’ paid squat for driving that plow, neither. He’d like to see that Paul manhandle a two-ton plow down an icy highway for eleven bucks an hour.

“Well, then, get your ass out there, Neddie. And that goes for you, too, Jimmy.” Paul’s gaze shot to where Turv was trying unsuccessfully to fade into the shadows. Eric, the only one of them currently not employed by the city of Fawn Creek, slurped his beer contentedly.

“And I want the sidewalk in front of the city hall shoveled and salted before the offices open in the morning. Got that?” Paul said.

“You bet, Mayor!” Ned snapped smartly, making a show of zipping up his insulated coveralls. It was a tight fit and the zipper protested the climb up and over Ned’s impressive keg gut.

Turv, too, hopped off his stool, squatted down, and began snapping closed the metal buckles on his Snowpacs. He looked up, smiling winningly. “Been at it all day, Mayor,” he puffed. “Since before sunrise. Just warming up is all. Saw Ned driving down the southbound and—”

“I don’t care, Turv,” Paul broke in. “Just get back to work. Both of you. Weatherman’s calling for another four inches by midnight.” The door opened and a swirl of fresh snow buffeted in against his exit.

“Stupid chinook,” Turv muttered, climbing back up on his stool.

“I’d like to tell LeDuc where to get off,” Ned said, jerking the zipper on his coveralls down to his waist. Not that he would act on the urge. Since his grandma had started demanding payment for room and board, and his other income venues had been literally plowed under, he needed this job. He wouldn’t put it past the old biddy to kick him out if he was late with the rent, neither. Hilda Soderberg was a heartless woman. He woulda been glad to vacate, too. Maybe move in with Eric, except … well, heartless she was but she was also a damn good cook.

“Hey, Dudster, ‘nother beer here, dear.” Ned picked up his Leinie’s bottle and wiggled it suggestively at Duddie who was polishing glasses on the other side of the bar and staring at the television set suspended in the corner of the room. Duddie probably hadn’t even noticed the mayor and his pal had been here. Duddie loved his television.

“Let’s see the money, honey,” Duddie said without bothering to look around.

There was no money and old Duds didn’t extend credit. Not since the well had gone dry. The dope well.

For the entire summer, Ned and Jimmy and Eric had babysat a quarter acre of dope, hauling water by hand from the Lake (a few yards from where they’d cleverly sown their crop), carefully pruning each little plant, staking their little stems, and making sure they were well-camouflaged from the highway by a thick wall of tall weeds and grass. They’d been only a few weeks from harvest when he and Turv had gotten calls from the mayor telling them to drive the grader and the front-end loader out to the Lake.

Ned had thought LeDuc was going to show them which ditches to mow.

Instead, they got there to find LeDuc and the whole damn city council waiting for them wearing stupid plastic construction site helmets, which they’d worn the whole shitty day as they personally supervised the
clearing of a new parking area for the reams of tourists they were sure their shitty sesquicentennial ice fishing tournament was going to bring in.

Ned took his last swig of beer, recalling the expression on Turv’s face. He’d thought old Turv was going to die of a broken heart. He’d seen the tears tracking muddy courses down his sunburned cheeks when their vehicles had passed. He hadn’t tried to hide his own tears, neither. There was no shame in it. The only shame was that all that excellent dope had been lost on account of some damn birthday party a bunch of assholes were throwing for a dead town, fer chrissakes!

And Eric and Turv and him? All their initiative, which even Ned conceded was little and rare enough not to be squandered nor taken for granted, gone in the span of one afternoon. Plowed under. Scraped clean.

Damn. He needed a beer.

He leaned back on his stool and reached around Turv, jabbing Eric in the shoulder. “Float me a couple bucks?”

“I’m broke,” Eric said, curling his fingers around his own bottle and sliding it closer. Ned regarded him suspiciously. Eric had worked over at the Lodge yesterday and Mrs. Hallesby always paid as she went.

“I had to buy gas,” Eric said defensively, reading Ned’s mind.

“I’m tapped, too,” Turv said before Ned could ask. “Wish we had some dope. Beer is expensive.”

“Hey, look,” Duddie announced to no one in particular.

“They’re talking about Fawn Creek. There’s Jenny Hallesby.”

“Lind. She’s Jenn Lind, now, Duddie.” Ned sneered. It always galled him that Duddie Olson, who had about as much personality as that old pet cow of his, should own a bar while he didn’t. “She changed her name, oh, about a million years ago so she’d sound like she really comes from here.”

Ned glanced up at the television just as Jenn’s face disappeared and was replaced by a girl reporter drooling over some guy and babbling about how he’d revolutionized modern American art. Hell. It was that fruitcake artist they were shipping in from New York. Okay, maybe he didn’t look like a fruitcake, but who could tell?

Ned swiveled his stool all the way around and settled his elbows on the sticky bar behind him. “Well, now, about this little dearth of dope problem,” he said, liking the sound of the phrase. He’d heard it on an MTV reality show. “You can thank our asshole mayor for that, can’t you?

“After all, he’s the one made us grade over an entire damn field of the stuff for his sasquatchtennial.” He yanked a fisted hand, thumb extended, toward the television set behind him.

“It’s
sesquicentennial
,” Duddie supplied helpfully.

“Yeah, fine, Duddie. The point is that while we work our asses off, for which we get paid crap and no thanks whatsoever, that guy up there on TV whittles butter and the whole goddamn state goes ape.”

“I don’t think—” Duddie began.

Ned cut him off. He’d had enough of Duddie’s commentary. “And
Jenn Lind
? What’s her big talent? Telling people how to fold their laundry!” The pure unfairness of it made him choke. “Why’d anyone want to fold laundry, anyways?”

“She cooks, too,” Turv mused, sipping his beer.

“Who gives a fart? I cook. No one gives me a couple hundred thousand a year to do it. And sure as
hell
no one has asked me to lead their stupid parade. This town sucks.”

“It does,” Turv agreed. Eric nodded.

“Where would they be without me?” Ned asked, warming to his subject. “I’m the guy that keeps the Pamida lot clear so that the minute it hits the stores, they can all rush out and buy the latest Jenn Lind DVD telling them how to wipe their butts! I’m a whole helluva lot more important to this town than some laundry folder or a butter-sculpting fruitcake from New York.”

“Me, too,” Turv said, his eyes riveted blissfully on some inner vision of himself heroically leading the assault on Pamida’s snow-choked parking lot from the comfort of the front-end loader’s CozyKab.

Turv’s vision didn’t bear comment.
Ned
was the head plower.

“I bet he wears an earring,” Ned muttered, catching Eric’s eye. “That sculptor.”

“I wear an earring, Ned,” Eric said reproachfully.

“Yeah, but you aren’t near fifty. You’re still a young man.” Sort of. “Prime of life.” If you were a tortoise. “This Jaax dude is an old geez.”

Eric frowned, not entirely buying it. “Well, they haven’t asked me to lead the parade either and I’m mosquito-control officer for the whole town. Can anyone here think what this place would be like if I didn’t pellet the sloughs with Bug-B-Gone?”

Like that was as hard as using a plow. “Yeah, but that’s only part-time.”

“It’s seasonal work. So’s plowing.”

“I mow the ditches, too. But whatever. Point I’m trying to make is that we get paid crap. We get treated like crap. They forced us to plow under an entire year’s profit margin while they stood by and watched and
no one even paid us overtime
.”

“You have to work twenty hours in a week to make overtime,” Duddie said.

“Who asked you, Duddie?” Ned spun around. “Don’t you have a toilet bowl to scrub out or something?”

Instead of answering, Duddie bent down under the bar and rose with an iron rod in his hand. Humming, he pushed it through the levers of the three spigots that delivered beer—so no one could help himself—locked it in place, and headed for the john.

“What a dickhead,” Eric said, hopeful until the last click that Duddie would leave the spigots unguarded.