Death on a silver platte.., p.1
Death on a Silver Platter, page 1
part #7 of Sophie Greenway Series
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Praise
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Pearl’s Notebook March 29, 1972
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Pearl’s Notebook March 29, 1972
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Pearl’s Notebook March 29, 1972
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chez Sophia’s Torta Milano
Don’t miss this tasty mystery from Ellen Hart - DIAL M FOR MEAT LOAF
Another culinary delight from Ellen Hart - Slice and Dice
Mystery on the Internet
Copyright Page
To my buddies in the Minnesota Crime Wave: Carl Brookins,
Deborah Woodworth, and William Kent Krueger.
Thanks for your constant friendship and
all the ridiculous good fun.
“Grub first, then ethics.”
—BERTOLT BRECHT
“You first parents of the human race . . . who ruined yourself for an apple, what might you not have done for a truffled turkey?”
—ANTHELME BRILLAT-SAVARIN
Praise for Ellen Hart and her Sophie Greenway mysteries
DIAL M FOR MEAT LOAF
“This is a hearty, satisfying meal of a mystery, with chunks of good characters and more than a dash of wit.”
—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
SLICE AND DICE
“The pace quickly bubbles from simmer to boil. . . . The complexity of Hart’s novel is admirable.”
—Publishers Weekly
THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO MURDER
“Strong characters and a rich Lake Superior setting make this solidly constructed mystery hard to put down. Another winner for Ellen Hart!”
—M. D. LAKE
FOR EVERY EVIL
”Another splendid specimen of the classical mystery story, nicely updated and full of interesting and believable characters.”
—The Purloined Letter
Praise for Ellen Hart and her Jane Lawless series
HALLOWED MURDER
“Hart’s crisp, elegant writing and atmosphere [are] reminiscent of the British detective style, but she has a nicer sense of character, confrontation, and sparsely utilized violence. . . . Hallowed Murder is as valuable for its mainstream influences as for its sexual politics.”
—Mystery Scene
VITAL LIES
“This compelling whodunit has the psychological maze of a Barbara Vine mystery and the feel of Agatha Christie. . . . Hart keeps even the most seasoned mystery buff baffled until the end.”
—Publishers Weekly
STAGE FRIGHT
“Hart deftly turns the spotlight on the dusty secrets and shadowy souls of a prominent theater family. The resulting mystery is worthy of a standing ovation.”
—Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine
A KILLING CURE
“A real treat . . . Secret passageways, a coded ledger, a mysterious group known only as the Chamber, experimental drugs, blackmail, sexual assault, betrayal: all the ingredients of a good whodunit.”
—Lambda Book Report
A SMALL SACRIFICE
“A smart and shocking thriller.”
—The Minnesota Daily
FAINT PRAISE
“Packed with mystery and scheming characters, Faint Praise is one of the year’s best. It’s no wonder Ellen Hart is everyone’s favorite author.”
—R. D. ZIMMERMAN
CAST OF CHARACTERS
BRAM BALDRIC: Radio talk-show host at WTWN in St. Paul; Margie’s father; Sophie’s husband.
MARGIE BALDRIC: Bram’s daughter.
NATHAN BUCKRIDGE: Chef; owner of Chez Sophie.
MICK FRYE: Tracy’s boyfriend.
SOPHIE GREENWAY: Owner of the Maxfield Plaza in St. Paul; restaurant reviewer for the Minneapolis Times Register; Bram’s wife.
DR. WALTER HOLLAND: Retired doctor; old friend of the Veelunds.
ROMAN MARCHAND: President of KitchenVisions.
HENRY TAHTINEN: Sophie’s father; original owner of the Maxfield Plaza.
PEARL TAHTINEN: Sophie’s mother; original owner of the Maxfield Plaza.
ALEXANDER (ALEX) VEELUND: President and CEO of Veelund Industries; Danny and Elaine’s brother; Millie’s son.
CARL VEELUND: Founder of Veelund Log Lodges; Millie’s husband; Elaine, Danny, and Alex’s father.
DANIEL REED VEELUND: Writer; Millie and Carl’s son; Ruth’s husband; Elaine and Alex’s brother.
ELAINE VEELUND: CEO of Veelund Log Lodges; Tracy’s mother; Danny and Alex’s sister; Millie’s daughter.
MILLIE VEELUND: The Veelund family matriarch; owner and chairman of the board of Veelund Industries; Elaine, Danny, and Alex’s mother.
RUTH VEELUND: Danny’s wife.
TRACY VEELUND-WILLARD: Elaine’s daughter.
GALEN ZANDER: Millie Veelund’s personal assistant.
Pearl’s Notebook
March 29, 1972
I couldn’t write a single word after it happened. That was two weeks ago. Even now, my hand is shaking. God forgive me, I should have seen the disaster coming, should have acted to prevent it, but I didn’t put all the clues together until it was too late. It’s not my fault. But if it’s not, why do I feel so guilty?
I arrived at the party all decked out in my new blue evening gown, my husband and daughter by my side. I came for Carl’s sake, to honor a man I’d loved and admired since I was sixteen years old. I thought we’d all have a good time. Instead, the celebration became a turning point, one of those rare moments in a life when a small action might have changed everything, spun the world in a different direction. But I was afraid—afraid of my feelings, of putting my needs above others. I wasn’t raised like that—to put feelings before my responsibilities—so I kept my thoughts to myself, tucked my emotions deep inside, and, like watching a ball roll out of my open hand, let the tragedy occur.
It all started so innocently. Henry, Sophie, and I had been invited to a housewarming party at Carl and Millie Veelund’s new home. This wasn’t just any old house, but a mansion, one that Carl’s company had built to his exact specifications. Carl had inherited the family lumber company when he was twenty-six, but he’d made his fortune in construction, as a builder of log homes. Veelund Log Lodges had become one of the hottest new names in the industry. In just six short years, his fortune had grown into the millions. This house was to be his masterpiece.
The celebration that night was my first opportunity to see the place firsthand. Carl had told me all about it, how it would combine traditional concepts with the latest technology. Western red cedar logs. Three stories high with twenty-five rooms. He called the house Prairie Lodge. It was a gift to his children, whom he adored beyond all reason, and his wife, for whom his feelings were more complex.
That evening I danced with Henry, then with Carl, and finally with Carl’s handsome eighteen-year-old son, Alexander, the one everyone calls Alex. I laughed at all their jokes, all the while sensing that something was terribly wrong. Carl should have been on top of the world. This was the culmination of years of hard work. But instead of euphoria, I sensed a deep anxiety in him. He seemed distracted, distant, worried. I didn’t understand.
Carl’s wife, Millie, was in her usual high spirits, presiding over the affair like the belle of the ball. Millie was born on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota, just like me. She’d grown up in a small miner’s house, wearing hand-me-downs, just as I had. But unlike me, Millie had serious pretensions. She’d gotten lucky when she married Carl Veelund. Her life was lived now on a silver platter. It was apparent to me that Carl had left the interior decoration to Millie. Carl’s tastes were far more simple. Millie, on the other hand, had social and cultural “aspirations.” Her bedrock conservatism was always at war with her need to be considered “modern.” She was a difficult woman with a prickly nature. She always rubbed me the wrong way. But then, that was to be expected, I guess. I don’t claim to be a saint.
Almost as soon as I’d walked in the door, Millie dragged me aside and confessed that she’d hired two housekeepers—two!—and was thinking of hiring a full-time gardener. This revelation was accompanied by world-weary sighs and shrugs of despair. Behind the act, it wasn’t hard to see the sparkle in her eyes, the pride, the dream of a dirt-poor little girl finally coming true. Oh, and Millie had also hired a cook, a man who’d worked at the Pillsburys for many years. She dropped the name as if she had dinner with them every Friday night. Construction on the tennis court would start in July, and Carl was dickering with several companies over installing a swimmin
Millie feels superior to Henry and me because she knows we bought an old clunker of a hotel in downtown St. Paul a few years ago and are still struggling to make a go of it. She never fails to ask me how business is. She allowed herself an amused smile when I lied and said that it was good.
The truth is, almost everything we earn is put back into the hotel’s restoration, so things are pretty tight right now. But I knew they would be, and that’s okay by me. Henry was incensed that the city fathers would even think of tearing down the historic Maxfield Plaza. The art deco architecture alone should have kept it standing. When I tried to explain all this to Millie she sighed and patted my hand, commenting that men were men, and women were their unfortunate pawns. It never occurred to her that I might share my husband’s dream—the desire to one day see an artistic and historic landmark returned to its former glory.
I’d never been a stranger to hard times. But more important, I knew the real score between Carl and Millie. Millie could feign happiness all she wanted, she could pretend to be the Queen of England for all I cared. I knew her marriage to Carl had been a disaster from day one.
As the night wore on, I noticed that Carl was drinking more than usual. His face had taken on a rosy glow as he walked his youngest son, Danny, around the room, introducing him to business associates and potential clients. My daughter, Sophie, and Carl’s middle child, Elaine, have been friends since they were nine, so I assumed their absence meant that they were off somewhere in the nether reaches of the log mansion trying on Millie’s makeup or plotting to overthrow the government. At fifteen, both of them seem to swing wildly between attacks of hormones and attacks of intellect.
It was just after ten when I noticed a waiter, one who had been hired for the evening, enter the living room and walk over to Carl. He carried a silver tray. On top of it was an envelope. Carl picked it up and dismissed him. He looked around for a couple of seconds until he spotted his wife—she was talking to several men by the fieldstone hearth—then he tucked the letter inside the jacket of his tux and left the room.
I know I had no business following him, but I did. Something was up and I wanted to know what it was. Carl cut swiftly into a back hallway that led to a room at the far end of the house. During the home-tour part of the evening I’d learned that this was “Mr. Veelund’s” study. Carl closed the door, but it didn’t shut all the way. Standing as quietly as I could outside the room, I watched him sit down behind his desk, switch on a reading lamp, then rip open the envelope.
“Damn you,” he said after a couple of seconds. His face blanched. “Damn you!” he said again, dropping the note. He picked up a crystal paperweight and hurled it across the room.
I wanted to go to him, wanted to read the note, have him explain to me why he was so upset. But his anger frightened me. Carl was a powerful man, with powerful friends and enemies. He’d been “my Carl” once upon a time, my love and my lover, but that was a long time ago. He was a different man now. I was a different woman. To intrude at this moment seemed far too intimate an act, filled with its own dangers.
I stayed by the door and watched him crush the letter in his fist and plunge it into the trash by his desk. He looked like a man in agony. I had to talk to him, but I hesitated. And it was during that moment of hesitation that he got up. Fearing that he’d find me, I twisted backward and ducked into another room just as he burst into the hallway. I waited until his heavy footsteps had died away, then entered the study and retrieved the letter from the trash. I felt brazen and guilty, intruding on his privacy like that, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I smoothed the piece of cheap stationery against the desktop and read the message. I read it again and again, shaking my head, trying to make sense of it.
Finally, realizing that I’d never know what it meant if I didn’t talk to Carl, I folded the paper back up and slipped it into my evening bag. Finding my courage at last, I left the room.
1
“We’re comin’ home!” announced Henry Tahtinen, a crackle of noise on his end of the line.
Sophie stood behind a beat-up metal desk in a small room in the subbasement of the Maxfield Plaza, the voices of her maintenance men shouting all around her. A badly rusted pipe had burst a few minutes ago, sending water gushing into a storage area. Already, her shoes were soaked. She had a vision of the water filling the storage room, rushing out the open door into the office where she was standing, covering her feet, then her knees, rising to her waist, and finally her neck. The only way out was a narrow stairway, which would be blocked by floating debris. She would die an ignominious death in the subbasement trying to swim her way up through thousands of rolls of wet toilet paper.
Sophie had an avid imagination. It was one of her more endearing qualities. “Where are you now?” she asked, watching two men carry a heavy trunk to safety.
“Bangkok. The Regent Hotel. We’ve spent the last two months in India and Nepal. Your mother’s become a Buddhist.”
Sophie could hear her mother in the background, protesting the comment. The last time Sophie had heard from her parents, they’d been in Tasmania.
“I had a hell of a time dragging her out of Katmandu,” continued her father. “She couldn’t get enough of the temples. She even learned to meditate. Me, I spent my time studying the vistas. ‘Ah, another vista,’ I’d say. Those Himalayas are hard to beat. While your mom soaked up the culture and lost her religion, I spent my time hiking. I’m in pretty good shape for an old geezer.”
“Dad, you’re not a geezer.”
“Of course I am. My hair’s about three shades grayer than it was when we left two years ago. God, has it been that long since I’ve seen you? How’s everything at the hotel?”
“Fine,” said Sophie, finding no reason to tell him about the pipe.
Before her parents had left on their world tour, they’d formally retired and handed the reins—or more accurately, sold the Maxfield Plaza for one dollar—to Sophie and her husband, Bram. Henry wanted to keep the hotel in the family. Rescuing the historic art deco landmark from the wrecking ball and restoring it to its former status as the premier hotel in downtown St. Paul had been his life’s work, his claim to fame in the Twin Cities. Sophie loved the hotel almost as much as he did.
What she hadn’t been thrilled about was the daunting task of taking over a family business that she knew very little about. She’d lived at the Maxfield when she was a teenager, worked the front desk before she left for college, but that didn’t mean she had any real, hands-on experience running a major metropolitan hostelry. Her father insisted that his staff, primarily his general manager, Hildegard O’Malley, could teach her everything she needed to know.
The first year was a crash course. Sophie was constantly terrified that she’d screw up, so she worked like a madwoman, which could have put her marriage in jeopardy. Thankfully, Bram was a patient man. He was already well established in his own career as a talk-show host for a local radio station, so he gave her the time she needed with a minimum of grousing. From the beginning, he made it abundantly clear that he had no interest in running the hotel. He said her parents were kind to include him in the deal, but the Maxfield was her inheritance. She would have to run it.
After Sophie’s parents had taken off for points unknown, Sophie and Bram sold their home in Minneapolis and settled into a beautiful apartment on the top floor of the hotel’s north tower. They quickly discovered that they adored living at the Maxfield, loved all the amenities a hotel could provide. The change in their lives had brought new stresses and strains, but new opportunities as well.
By the second year, Sophie felt much more confident in her position, so confident that she took on the job of restaurant critic for the Minneapolis Times Register. This caused another round of grumbling from Bram. He insisted that he needed to make a date just to catch a glimpse of her. The truth was a little less dramatic, but still, all life, including married life, was a negotiation. When he learned that Rudy, Sophie’s son, would be taking over the majority of the duties at the paper and that Sophie’s involvement would have limits, the grousing turned to manageable murmurings.
Bram understood something fundamental about Sophie, and for that she was grateful. Food would always be one of her prime passions. Since she’d done reviews for the paper in the past, the job offer hadn’t come completely out of left field. In a few more years she hoped to bow out gracefully and let her son take over as senior restaurant critic—as long as he promised to allow her an occasional guest review.
