Hot Dish (36 page)

“Who?” Steve asked, all sorts of hitherto ignored chivalrous impulses rushing to the fore.

“No one. Those guys with the butter head.” She frowned at him. “You should let your hair grow longer. Not everyone is lucky enough to get curls, you know.” She delivered these last sentences in an unwilling tone.

“You think?” he asked, pleased. “What did those guys want? Where’s the butter head?”

“I don’t know. They think I’m stupid enough to pay them twice for it. They called me on my cell earlier today and wanted more money. I told them no and now they’re pissed off.”

Jenn moved past him.

“Where are you going?” Steve asked, falling into step beside her.

“They told me to look on the front step. On the way, way small chance these guys have actually left the butter head out there, I am going, even though instinct tells me I have a better chance of finding a bag of burning cow poop.”

She yanked open the sticky front door. A shoe box wrapped in twine lay on the ground before her, a trail of men’s boots to and from a fresh set of tire tracks a short ways off.

“Your Prince is a crappy guard dog,” she said, picking up the box. She held it up to her ear, giving an exploratory jiggle. Steve sniffed. It had an odd odor. A little off. Jenn must have smelled it, too.

“If those assholes have sent me a dead mouse,” she said, unwrapping the package, “so help me, I will hunt them down and—” She stopped and frowned down at the open box. An oddly shaped, oddly scented … yellowish something lay on the bottom, slightly crescent-shaped and flattened. Steve recognized it immediately.

“What is this?” Jenn asked, frowning.

“It’s an ear,” he said. “The butter head’s ear.”

Jenn’s nose wrinkled with repugnance, whether from the old freezer smell wafting up out of the box or the idea that someone would lop off the
butter head’s ear, he couldn’t tell. He watched her closely thinking that under normal circumstances she’d have laughed. But circumstances were not normal.

Something was bothering her, something more than the delivery of the butter head’s ear.

For himself, Steve wasn’t laughing not only because the idiots who had his sculpture were violating a work of art—his art—but also because if they continued lopping off bits of her, they just might lop off the bit with his key in it. Or worse, lop off a piece and have the key fall out.

It wasn’t like the key was suspended deep within the butter. Nah-uh. He’d quickly dug a hole, shoved it in, plastered it over with a plug of butter, and bang! The arrival of the bounty hunter had ended any further efforts.

“We have to get that butter head back,” he said.

She looked at him. “Why? What’s so important about the butter head, Steve? Why does everyone want it?”

“Everyone?” He tilted his head.

She flushed. “Yeah. You know, you, the mayor, the guy who offered the reward, and there’s some other guy here from
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
who’ll pay ten thousand for it so they can stick it in the
Ripley’s
Museum. The butter head is a suspiciously popular girl.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Is there something about this thing that I don’t know about?”

“It’s important. Really important,” he began. “The fact is there’s something in it that—”

“Steve,” she cut in. He stopped, because she’d moved closer to him and was looking up at him all serious. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had looked at him with that expression—not of expectation, but of concern.

Thoughts of the butter head flew straight out of his mind, chased away by her obvious consternation. All on his behalf. She cared. About him.

“Steve,” she continued soberly, “you know, maybe you’re a little overinvested in this butter head.”

“Really?” She was such a focused, objective, and competent woman—qualities he generally didn’t particularly admire, except in Verie, and associated with desperate people who wasted their lives in a perpetual state of ambition. But if he wasn’t like that … well, she was, but she was more than that. He’d seen another aspect of her,
felt
another aspect, a woman who had returned his kiss unabashedly, wholeheartedly, without restraint or self-consciousness. He found this combination of budding voluptuary and stoic entrancing.

“It doesn’t belong to you, and I have to tell you, I don’t think it’s going to belong to you,” she was saying, looking a little uncomfortable. “I’m trying to tell you not to get your hopes up about it.”

She wanted the butter head, too, he realized. For whatever reason, it was important to her. Because … because he’d done it? Or maybe she wanted it for her parents. Because it meant something to them. That seemed even more probable.

“I could buy it?” he suggested. He angled his head. All she had to do was angle the other way … lean in an inch … give him some sign. Any sign. Because he was suddenly wary, for the first time in ages, afraid of taking the wrong step, of going too fast, of misreading her. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever known … and yet, conversely, she was in so many ways familiar to him. Gloriously so.

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head. The lights overhead stroked it platinum. “You know, not everything is for sale.”

“I know.” He nodded, watching her.

She hesitated and then suddenly poked him in the sternum with her index finger. “This house. You tried to buy my home—I mean, my parents’ home.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, not precisely certain why she sounded so accusing. “I can do great work here. I think this place could be really good for me.”

“You should have told me you were planning to make them an offer.”

“Why? I thought you’d approve,” he said. “You were just telling me how much they wanted out of here but that they wouldn’t accept your help, so I thought they might accept an offer from me. It was a win-win situation. They could get out of Fawn Creek and I could get a studio.”

“Well, I was wrong. About them. For whatever reason, they don’t want to leave here. I think they’ve got their cemetery plots paid for or something,” she said gruffly.

She wouldn’t own up to anything positive about her feelings for this place, this town. But if that was the way she wanted to play it, he could, too.

“Sorry you’ll be stuck coming back here.”

She shrugged. “I’ll live.”

“Maybe I’ll see you.”

“Well, I’ll be in New York and—”

“I mean here.”

“But my mom said they didn’t sell you the place.”

“Not the Lodge or the land, but they sold me the barn.”

“What?” Jenn raked the back of her hair with her fingers. “Why doesn’t anyone tell me anything?”

Steve had to say it, even though he was afraid of her response, and this was so unlike him, the hesitancy, this uncertainty, this caring so much about another’s opinion of him. He hadn’t even really cared whether his wives had liked him.
Him
. Not what he did or what he created.

“I can withdraw the offer, if you’d rather.” He sounded stiff rather than nonchalant.

Jenn’s gaze rose to his. She scowled, unhappy, confused, looking as uncertain as he felt, but he could count on her being direct and honest, with both him and herself. He knew that.

“No,” she finally said, shaking her head. “No, don’t do that.”

He must have been getting old, he thought as he watched her go, distracted by her inner thoughts, because he found that simple sentence perfectly satisfying.

Dunk was having trouble sleeping.

He hurt. Karin, virtuous and voluptuous, had cut off his morphine. Twice today, once in the morning and the afternoon, she had insisted he get up and walk up and down the hallway, dragging his IV stand with him. She hadn’t offered him anything for the resulting agony aside from a couple Tylenol with codeine.

But it wasn’t the pain that kept him awake. It was the thought of those cheating assholes who were holding his butter head hostage. Early this evening the local network had run a piece about the popularity of Steve Jaax works and how every collector of modern art in the country worthy of the name had a Jaax.

Originally, Dunk had been thinking he could get maybe a hundred thousand dollars for an older piece like
Muse in the House
off the legit market. Now he was thinking four times that. He wanted that money. He needed it. And the key to it was literally here, in this pissant nowhere town, his for the taking. If he just knew where to look!

The thieving sons of bitches who were supposed to have called him and told him the butter head’s whereabouts as soon as they got their money hadn’t called. If he hadn’t seen the panic in Jenn Lind’s eye, he might have suspected her of ignoring his threats. But he had seen the panic, and if Dunk Dunkovich knew one thing, it was when he had a fish well and truly hooked; Jenn Lind had been gill-netted.

Which didn’t solve his little problem, did it?

Beside him, the phone rang and Dunk snatched it up. It could only be one of two people: the assholes or Jenn Lind ‘fessing up that she’d missed the drop.

“Who is this?” he spat into the phone.

“The butter head bandits.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Where’s my sculpture?”

“We got it.” The guy was trying to sound nonchalant. Amateurs.

“Well, where is it?”

“I
said
, we got it. There’s been a change of plans.”

Dunk waited.

“We found out that we were undervaluing our stock, so’s to speak. And now it appears there are other parties interested in acquiring the product.”

The guy had been watching too many Quentin Tarantino movies. “Really? So you’re trying to screw me?”

“Pretty much.” The bastard sounded gleeful.

“How much do you want now?”

“We’re not sure exactly.”

“What?” What kind of deal was this? Ransomers calling just to chat? Or maybe they wanted his advice on how much to ask for? He didn’t frickin’ believe this!

“We still got feelers out, trying to determine exactly what our product is worth.”

“Would you stop saying product? It’s a butter head!” Dunk shouted into the phone.

“Okay, butter head, then,” the guy came back sullenly. “We’re calling to let you think on how much you’re willing to bid for it, so think and”—his voice dropped dramatically—”hang close to the phone. We’ll be in touch.”

“Like I have a choice,” Dunk sneered, but the line had gone dead.

Steve sat at the kitchen table two hours later, drinking a glass of milk and munching on a rice cake he’d smeared with Nina’s homemade, unsalted peanut butter. At least it was recognizable, and besides, he was starving. He’d managed to get down most of Nina’s FiberFabulous Tofu Loaf, but it wasn’t exactly stick-to-your-ribs fare. No wonder Nina was so skinny.

The phone rang and Steve jumped. It was, he’d learned earlier today, the only phone in the house. It rang again.

He knew from experience that no one was going to race down here from wherever they were—and he wondered especially where Jenn was—to answer it. The Hallesbys did not center their lives around the ringing of phones or clocks or television programs, and neither did he, not since TiVo. Still, it was so high-minded, it made him grin. He wondered if he’d become as high-minded after living here a while. Probably. Jenny could be his mentor.

That Jenny figured prominently in his vision of his future he no longer questioned. The only real question now was how to get her to accept the same vision. As he pondered this, the message machine picked up, silently communicating its missive to whoever was on the other line. Then a man’s voice came over the speaker.

“Look,” the guy said in a grudging tone, “I know it’s late. Sorry. But we forgot to tell you when we were gonna call you, so we’re calling back to tell you now. Only we got more information for you to chew on, too. So that’s another reason we’re calling so late.”

My God, Steve realized, it was the butter head thieves!

“So here’s the thing,” the voice continued. “That guy over t’the hospital? The guy who chased us on the snowmobiles and crashed? And that wasn’t our faults, by the way. He went off the trail.”

The thief sounded stoned out of his mind.

“Anyhow,” the guy rambled on, “he’s willing to pay big bucks for that sculpture. So if you want it, you can have it for—” he broke off.

“No!” Steve shouted, grabbing the phone. “Are you there?” he spoke frantically into the receiver. “Tell me you’re there. Come on, man,
speak to me
.”

A tinny voice came from the earpiece. “Who’s this?”

Steve closed his eyes, breathing a sigh of relief. “This is Steve Jaax.”

“Oh fer … where’s Jenn?”

“She’s not here. What do you want for the butter head?”

“Well, now that’s just what me and my friends here were discussing when you went all postal.”

“What do you want for it?”

The guy took a deep breath. “What’ll you give?”

“I dunno. Twenty-five?”

“Come on, man,” the guy sounded disgusted. “You gotta do better than that.”

“Right. Thirty.”

“Geesh,” the guy sneered.

Steve had no idea where he was going to get the money but he would get it even if Verie had to charter a plane and fly here from New York. He had already planned to sell some of his collection to pay the Hallesbys. He might as well kiss good-bye to the Miró, too.

“Forty then” he said, adding as he heard the sniff on the other end, “Look, when do you want this? In what form? Forty thousand dollars is not going to be easy for me to come up with here.”

“Forty thous—” It sounded like someone dropped the phone.

There was another long silence. Then the sound of a hand covering the mouthpiece and the mumble of excited, muffled conversation.

“Come on, man!” Steve said in exasperation. It was so close, he could almost see her, the sylph form, brilliant and graceful and irreverent and … Fabulousa’s furious face when she heard the news. He’d carried the dream of retribution so long it was reflex. But now superseding it was the image of Jenn looking at him approvingly as he returned the butter head, sans key, to her parents’ care. She might even tear up. Hell, he might.

“Just tell me where you want the money and where I can pick up the butter head.”