The Grilling Season (35 page)

Please
, I prayed,
no hammering.
Unfortunately, the crack of metal hitting log wall conjured up my commercial kitchen—retrofitted into our old house—as it was being destroyed by our general contractor, Gerald Eliot. One of the reasons I’d been interested in catering at the cabin was that, apparently, Merciful Migrations had hired Eliot to do some remodeling, then fired him before paying him a cent. I wish I’d been that smart. I’d told Andre I didn’t mind dealing with models; it was
remodelers
who’d made my life a living hell.

As the hammer banged methodically, I pictured Eliot, his yellow mane spilling to his shoulders, his arms broadly gesturing, blithely promising he could
easily
install a new bay window—my ex-husband had destroyed the original—over my sink.
It’ll take three days
, Eliot had vowed at the beginning of August, with a wide grin.

The pounding reverberated in my skull. On the first day, Eliot had brandished his power saw, destroyed the window’s casing and surrounding wall,
then accidentally ripped through an adjoining cupboard. It had crashed to the floor.
Just an additional day of work to fix that
, he’d observed with a shrug.
No extra charge. Start first thing tomorrow.

I groaned, checked my watch, and turned my attention back to the tray. Swiftly, I plugged in the electric warmer and moved the cheesecakes on top. I was here; I was working. I would even be paid. And I needed the money. Before Gerald Eliot had sliced into our kitchen wall, the new catering outfit in town had cut my business by thirty percent. And unfortunately, on Day One of the two days Gerald Eliot had actually worked for me, he’d pocketed the full seven-hundred-dollar down payment on the new window installation. On Day Two, he’d covered the gaping hole he’d made with plastic sheets, hopped into his pickup truck, and roared away.

I straightened the row of spring rolls bulging with fat pink shrimp and sprigs of cilantro.
Focus.
At least at this cabin there’s a
kitchen
—although it wasn’t in very good shape, either.

“What else?” I asked Andre on my next trip to the kitchen, hoping I sounded cheerful. He was fingering the plywood on the wall beside the oven.

“Drinks, serving utensils, the butter, and ice.” He looked up from the wall, his wide blue eyes merry. “Guess what I just found out? They fired Gerald Eliot for sleeping with a
model!
” I sighed; Andre loved gossip. It was one of the reasons he’d despised retirement.

I swung back out to the buffet with my newly-loaded tray. Sleeping with a model, eh? At least
he
was getting some sleep. This was not the case with my friends the Burrs, whose house was to be the site
for the second part of this fashion shoot. Neither one of
them
was getting much sleep at all these days, thanks—
have you guessed it?
—to Gerald Eliot.

In April, Cameron and Barbara Burr had been convinced the sunroom Gerald Eliot was adding onto their house would be completed by August. That was when Hooded Images was scheduled to set up the P & G catalog’s outdoor shots, using as a backdrop the Burrs’ spectacular view of the Continental Divide’s snow-capped peaks. By April, Gerald Eliot had already been working on the sunroom for eleven months—admittedly, off and on—but what was left to be done?

Ah, but the windows had been delayed; the drywall couldn’t go up until the windows were in; Eliot had had a cash flow problem; he’d sailed off to his next job. Mountain breezes swirling through the house at night had forced Barbara Burr into the hospital—with pneumonia. Cameron Burr had moved into his guesthouse. Last I heard, Barbara’s pulmo-nologist had put her on a ventilator.

Maybe when the P & G catalog was done, all of Gerald Eliot’s former clients could have lunch and form a chiseled-by-a-contractor support group. But not today. Today, I was catering with Andre, watching models undress, taking food to malnourished, depressed Cameron Burr, trying to think of new ways to make money, worrying about my husband’s conflicts with an arrogant prosecutor, and calling down to Lutheran hospital to see if Barbara Burr had died.

I admired the beautiful dishes on the buffet. That was enough for one day, wasn’t it?
Don’t ask.

This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition.
NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

The Grilling Season
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam hardcover edition published October 1997

Bantam paperback edition / August 1998

Interior illustrations by Aher/Donnell.

All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1997 by Diane Mott Davidson.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-20037.

eISBN: 978-0-307-42785-4

v3.0