A Catered Valentine's Day Read online

  “There’s nothing wrong with Marshall’s,” Libby heard herself snap. “Not everyone can shop at The Most.” Let alone fit into their clothes.

  Bernie made a rude noise.

  Libby wanted to say that she didn’t see the sense in spending hundreds of dollars on a skirt, especially these days, what with the condition the oven was in, but she decided now was not the time to start a fight with her sister.

  “Can we leave my clothes alone and concentrate on getting to the correct funeral?” Libby said instead.

  “By all means. So where do you think the Vongel funeral is anyway?” Bernie replied. “This place is huge.”

  Libby looked around. On this they could both agree. It was true. The Hanson Funeral Home was now extremely large. Libby remembered when the place could only accommodate two funerals, but in the past year Marvin’s father had gone on a building spree. He’d kept on adding room after room. Now the place could fit ten to twelve “bereavements,” as Clayton liked to call them.

  “This is like one of those bridal palaces out on the Island,” Bernie remarked. “It just goes on and on forever. I’m surprised they don’t have the gold funeral room for the rich, the purple one for those with royal persuasions, and the green one for the ecologically minded among us. You know, themed burials like they do out in Hollywood. You could have the Viking funeral, the Roman funeral, the French Revolution funeral—that of course would come with optional knitting.”

  Libby massaged her temples. “You’re giving me a headache.”

  “No. The air freshener in here is giving you a headache.”

  “Bernie,” Libby pleaded. “For once be quiet.”

  “Fine.”

  Libby watched her sister’s eyes rest on the huge bird-of-paradise flower arrangement in front of them. “And don’t say anything about that either,” she instructed.

  “I wasn’t,” Bernie said, sniffing, even though Libby knew that she had been thinking it. “Except to point out that they’re bad feng shu. They’re blocking the energy flow.” And Bernie pointed in the direction of the entrance hallway. “I bet there’s some sort of directory in there.”

  “Good thinking,” Libby said. She started trotting off in that direction.

  She’d taken two steps when she could feel her pants begin to slide. As she yanked them up, she saw Marvin come down the hall. Oh no, she thought. Why do I always see him when I look like such a mess? She knew that he didn’t care, but she did.

  “Thank heavens I found you,” Marvin said as he came toward them.

  He was panting slightly and his tie was askew. That made Libby feel better. Bernie always called her and Marvin the two schleps, and she hated to say it but her sister was right.

  “Why? What’s the matter?” Libby asked him. He looks tired, she thought. He’s been working too hard. Which, if you’re a funeral director, Bernie would point out, isn’t such a good thing for the rest of the community.

  Marvin looked around. When he was sure no one was watching he hugged her. “I thought you’d be at the Vongel funeral.”

  “We made a mistake,” Bernie said. “We ended up at the Voiton affair.”

  Marvin shook his head as if to say that was something he would have done, and as he stepped back Libby remembered yet again why she loved him.

  “We’d better go. My dad is waiting to speak to you and Bernie,” Marvin told her.

  “Why?” Libby asked again.

  “He’ll tell you,” Marvin replied as he motioned for her and Bernie to follow him down the hall.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I’d rather he did,” Marvin said, and he looked so unhappy Libby decided not to insist.

  Three steps later he tripped over the leg of a chair that had been placed out in the hallway and stumbled into a table with one of the bird-of-paradise flower arrangements on it. Bernie caught the vase just as it was about to tumble over. That was the other thing she liked about Marvin, Libby thought. He was clumsier than she was.

  As Marvin thanked Bernie for saving the flowers Libby wondered what on earth his father wanted to talk to them about. Clayton wasn’t particularly fond of her, her sister, or her father. He thought they were a bad influence on his son, distracting him from the family business and giving him, in Marvin’s father’s own words, “fantasies about being a detective when he should be concentrating on other more important things.” Notably the family business.

  It was a business, it must be said, that Marvin wasn’t particularly fond of. Libby didn’t blame him. She still hadn’t reconciled herself to what he did. It gave her the creeps if she thought about it, so she tried not to. How could anyone want to be a funeral director? No matter how much she tried she just couldn’t see it.

  But then, Marvin didn’t really have a choice. At least not when you had a dad like Clayton. She and Bernie were lucky they had their father. Very lucky. Libby bit her lower lip as she tried to remember what Bernie called Clayton. A martini? A martin? No. A martinet. She was trying to remember what the word meant when she realized that Marvin had said something to her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “What’s the matter with your pants?” he asked.

  Libby looked down. They were beginning to slide down her waist again.

  “Nothing,” she said. As she hoisted them up she could hear Bernie snickering in the background. “Nothing at all.”

  It was at that moment that Marvin’s dad materialized from a door in one of the rooms. When she’d first seen him, Bernie had said he looked as if he’d been dipped in shellac. And it was true. Everything about him gleamed, from his hair down to his shoes.

  He nodded curtly at Marvin. “That took long enough,” he told him.

  Marvin looked down at the floor.

  “You know how important this is.”

  “Hey,” Libby said. “It wasn’t…”

  But before she could finish, Clayton dismissed her comment with a wave of his hand. “Don’t bother with excuses. We have to go,” he said, turning to the door where Libby knew the hearses were parked. “We have to go now.”

  “We can’t,” Libby heard her sister say.

  Libby watched Clayton stiffen. He was about to reply when a woman started walking down the hall. He plastered a simpering smile on his face, nodded at her, and asked her if everything was all right. “Mrs. Frost, if there’s anything, anything at all I can do in your time of need…”

  “No. You’ve been wonderful,” she told him.

  Libby watched Marvin’s dad produce another of his smiles.

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” And he patted her hand. When she was gone he rounded on them. “You have to come with me,” he growled at them.

  “Please,” Marvin added.

  Libby looked at her sister and gave a little nod.

  “Are you sure?” Bernie asked.

  Libby nodded her head more vigorously. What else could she say? She didn’t want to have anything to do with whatever this was, but given the circumstances—mainly the fact that her boyfriend’s father was doing the asking—she felt she didn’t have a choice.

  Chapter 3

  B ernie looked out the rear window of Clayton’s limo. The view was not inspiring. It was gray and dreary. The sky was slate. The ground was frozen solid. Little patches of dirty snow remained from the storm they’d had two weeks ago. The trees were all bare. It reminded her of a Thomas Hardy poem. Depressing. No doubt about it, February sucked. It was the time of year when she wished she were back in L.A. No, make that Costa Rica or Cancún. Somewhere with sun and palm trees. Scratch the palm trees. She’d just take the sun and a couple of Cuba Libres.

  February was her least favorite time of the year. Always had been. Spring was too far away to think about. Except if you were a gardener. Then you got to think about what you were going to plant. The holidays were all done, except of course for Valentine’s Day. Which was usually fun.

  In grade school she’d made lace valentines and given out those little candy h
earts to what her mom had called her “special friends.” Now, however, she gave her “special friend” different gifts. She’d gotten a great red thong and matching lace bra to wear for Rob. Except now she was mad at him.

  Why had he signed up for the bachelor auction at the Just Chocolate benefit for Sudanese orphans? That had been totally unnecessary. She’d like to give him a kiss all right. A kiss with her fist. Pow. Right in the kisser. Rob had called her jealous. Which was ridiculous.

  She didn’t have a jealous bone in her body. None. Okay, maybe her pinky. It was the principle of the thing. She just had to figure out which principle it was. She just wanted to spend time with Rob. Was that so bad? She’d tried to explain, but he hadn’t gotten it. Of course, he hadn’t gotten a lot of things lately.

  All she knew was that Rob had better get her something really, really nice to make up for this. Like the pink cowboy boots she’d seen in Saks. Or dinner out at the new Moroccan restaurant down in Dumbo. Yes. That’s what she’d ask for.

  The thought made her feel slightly better—having a plan always did—and she turned her attention back to the view. They were out of Longely now and heading down Townsend Road. Which meant they were heading either to Longely’s minimall or the cemetery. Considering the circumstances, Bernie was betting on the cemetery.

  She leaned forward and tapped Marvin’s father on the shoulder. “Are we going to the Oaks?”

  Clayton turned his head around and glanced at her. “You’ll see,” he said.

  Then to Bernie’s relief he looked at the road, always a good thing for a driver to do, in her opinion.

  “Because I’d prefer the mall,” Bernie said to the back of his head. “They have a sale on there at E.J’s.”

  E.J.’s was a funky little shop that sold T-shirts and the odd sweater or two.

  Marvin’s father grunted.

  Bernie tried again. “I have a friend that teaches the chemistry of embalming.”

  Nothing.

  “Do you use pomade on your hair?”

  “I don’t think you’re funny,” Clayton replied.

  “Most people don’t,” Libby commented.

  “Nice answer,” Bernie told her.

  “But true,” Libby said.

  Bernie sighed, sat back, and watched the trees going by. At least I’m not in the front seat with him, she thought. Things could always be worse. That was what her mother had always said. But then, they could always be better too. She glanced at her watch.

  They had another hour to go before the repairman arrived at the shop. She hoped they’d make it back to A Little Taste of Heaven by then, but she had a feeling they wouldn’t. Whatever this was about had to be pretty serious, and in her experience pretty serious always meant time-consuming—extremely time-consuming. Of that she was sure.

  Otherwise Marvin’s father wouldn’t be doing this. Normally, he didn’t even talk to her or Libby. She’d heard through the grapevine that he still wanted Marvin to marry Emily Funkenwagel. Her dad owned a chain of funeral homes. She was the heiress of the Funkenwagel Mortuary Places. Everything with Marvin’s father was all about the business. She felt bad for Marvin. There hadn’t been any goofing off time for him when he was growing up.

  Bernie twisted her silver and onyx ring around her finger while she tried to figure out what this was about, but for the life of her she couldn’t. Oh well. She guessed she’d just have to wait and see. She bent down and readjusted the strap on her blue suede stiletto. The dratted thing kept slipping. But one thing she did know. Walking in the Oaks in these things was not going to be fun. If she had known where the day was going to take her she would have chosen a different pair of shoes.

  The Oaks was the oldest cemetery in the surrounding area. It had been built almost a hundred years ago by a famous landscape architect and conceived of as a place where the dead could be buried and the living could come and visit them on weekends.

  People did things like that a hundred years ago—linked the dead and the living. Unlike now, when people moved all the time and families, let alone communities, were fragmented. As a consequence, the old part of the cemetery had loads of winding paths that were way too narrow for cars. You had to hike up and down hills.

  Bernie leaned forward and tapped Clayton on the shoulder again.

  “What?” he snapped.

  “Are we going to the new part?” she asked.

  “The new part of what?” he demanded, turning back to look at her again.

  “Car,” Bernie yelled as a Toyota came toward them. She could hear Libby shrieking up front.

  “I see it,” Clayton told her as he turned his eyes back to the road.

  Another person who couldn’t drive and talk at the same time, Libby reflected. At least she now knew where Marvin got his driving ability from, but that was the only thing he had in common with his dad. Bernie leaned her head back against the seat and decided that the only talking she’d be doing in the limo from now on was with her sister.

  “So,” she said to Libby, “how are the chicken breasts coming?”

  The chicken breasts were supposed to be made into a salad by now, but when she and Libby had left they were still marinating in their bath of yogurt, lime juice, cumin, and coriander. Some shops would just use precooked, prepackaged chicken breasts, but that wasn’t Libby’s style. Bernie smiled as she remembered the look of outrage on her sister’s face when the food salesman from Sysco had suggested it. You’d have thought he was asking her to use vanillin instead of vanilla or margarine instead of butter.

  “I could call Amber and ask her to get the salad started,” Bernie suggested.

  Libby didn’t answer. She probably hadn’t heard her, Bernie reflected. That’s because she had her nose pressed against the limo’s window. Bernie was just about to repeat her offer but decided against it. For some reason she had no desire to talk to Libby or anyone else in Clayton’s presence. He was, she reflected, like some negative force that just sucked the fun out of things. She’d noticed that Marvin was even more nervous than he usually was when he was around him.

  The silence was beginning to get oppressive. Bernie decided it would be better to concentrate her energies on other things, so she sat back and closed her eyes and thought about how she and Libby were going to set up for the benefit at Just Chocolate.

  Just Chocolate was obviously supplying the chocolate and they were doing the wine, but she and Libby were responsible for the food part of the operation. At latest count Bree Nottingham had sold over three hundred tickets out of a possible five hundred, but Bernie was sure that by the day arrived the event would be sold out. It was the perfect Valentine’s Day event.

  She and Libby had the menu loosely worked out, but they had to refine it. And then they needed to figure out the numbers so they could phone their orders in. The benefit was only two weeks away and they needed time to prepare.

  Of course they were doing the tried and true. Platters of strawberries and tangerine sections as well as baskets full of grape clusters and melon and mango slices. They were serving three different types of chocolate cake, not including cheesecake, all of them baked in heart-shaped pans, as well as eight varieties of chocolate cookies, among them chocolate cookies with black pepper and chocolate cookies with ginger, a combination she was particularly fond of, as well as a takeoff on a Linzer tart cookie.

  Then they were making six different kinds of brownies, among them rocky road, cashew, mint, and double fudge. Just thinking about all the baking they had to do made her tired. But at least they weren’t doing pies or tarts. Those took forever.

  Less obviously, she and Libby were doing figs stuffed with almonds and chocolate, a Portuguese delicacy. They were also doing chicken mole, a Mexican chicken stew made with about twenty ingredients, including chocolate, as well as a South American beef stew that used dark chocolate as a thickening and flavoring agent. With the stews, Bernie was thinking they should serve some sort of stretch bread to sop up the sauce.

  Bern
ie thought again about what a tremendous amount of work they’d undertaken. They really did have to order and start baking now in order to be ready in time. At least they should. Fortunately, a lot of the stuff could be baked in advance and frozen, not that Libby would agree. Unfortunately, what with the oven and the building inspector and the construction, Bernie didn’t know how they were going to do that on top of their usual stuff, at least not if they didn’t want to work until three in the morning.

  Bernie felt a stab of panic. What if the building inspector said they had to stop working until the exhaust system was installed? He had the ability to shut them down. Maybe she could bribe him. Ha. She wouldn’t know how to even start. Or maybe Bree could talk to him and plead their case. That would work better.

  Bernie was beginning to think her mother was correct when she said, “In life it’s not what you know but who you know that counts.”

  Bernie moved her ring up and down her finger.

  Libby was right, though. It was important to go to Mrs. Vongel’s mother’s funeral, and now they’d missed it. This was all her fault. As usual. If she hadn’t taken so long putting her mascara on, they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry, and they would have noticed what the sign on the door said. She hadn’t even actually read it. She’d just seen the V and sailed right in.

  Maybe if she baked Mrs. Vongel a cake. Scratch that. Like Bree Nottingham she was a size 2. She didn’t eat, she grazed. Maybe an expensive bottle of wine? Yes. That might work. Or better yet, a good brandy. Bernie was tapping her fingers against the seat, trying to decide what kind, when she realized Libby was speaking to her.

  Bernie’s head went up.

  “What?” she asked.

  “I was just saying that we’re here.”

  “Indeed we are,” Bernie replied as they entered the front gate of the Oaks.

  “Remember good old Charlie?” Libby asked her.

  “How could I forget him?”

  “What you did was really mean.”

  “Mean?” Bernie retorted. “I was mean? What about him?”