Death and a Dog

She decided to blame her lack of marshmallows on Martha Stewart and her extremely sensible vanilla cheesecake recipe.

Lacey was about to wish Gina a good night and reverse her car back the way she’d come, when she felt Chester nudging her with his nose. She turned and looked over at him. The shopping bags that she’d placed in the passenger footwell had spilled open, and some of the items she’d brought had fallen out.

“That’s an idea…” Lacey said. She looked back out the window. “Hey, Gina. How about we have dinner together? I have wine and pasta. And all the ingredients to make Martha Stewart’s authentic New York City style cheesecake if we get bored and need an activity.”

Gina looked thrilled. “You had me at wine!” she exclaimed.

Lacey laughed. She reached down to fetch the grocery bags from the footwell, and earned herself another nudge from Chester’s wet nose.

“What is it now?” she asked him.

He tipped his head to the side, his fluffy tufts of eyebrow flitting upward.

“Oh. I get it,” Lacey said. “I told you off before for not stopping me from putting my foot in it earlier with Tom. You’re proving a point, aren’t you, that it all worked out nonetheless? Well, I’ll give you that.”

He whinnied.

She chuckled and petted his head. “Clever boy.”

She got out the car, Chester leaping out after her, and headed up Gina’s path, maneuvering around the sheep and chickens that were dotted about the place.

They headed inside.

“So what happened with Tom?” Gina asked as they walked the length of the low-ceilinged corridor toward her rustic country-cottage kitchen.

“It was Paul actually,” Lacey explained. “He mixed up the flours or something.”

They entered the brightly lit kitchen, and Lacey placed the shopping bags on the work surface.

“It’s about time he fired that Paul lad,” Gina said with a tsk.

“He’s an apprentice,” Lacey told her. “He’s supposed to make mistakes!”

“Sure. But then he’s meant to learn from them. How many batches of pastry has he ruined now? And for it to impact on your plans really does take the biscuit.”

Lacey smirked at Gina’s amusing phrase.

“Honestly, it’s fine,” she said, taking all the items out of the bag. “I’m an independent woman. I don’t need to see Tom every day.”

Gina grabbed some wine glasses and poured them each a glass, then they got on with making the dinner.

“You’ll never believe who came into my store before closing time today,” Lacey said, as she gave the pasta a cursory stir in its pot of simmering water. The instructions said no stirring was required during the four minutes it took to boil, but that just felt too lazy, even for Lacey!

“Not the Americans?” Gina asked, in a tone of distaste as she popped the tomato sauce in the microwave for the whole two minutes it required to heat.

“Yes. The Americans.”

Gina shuddered. “Oh dear. What did they want? Let me guess, Daisy wanted Buck to buy her an overpriced piece of jewelry?”

Lacey strained the pasta in a sieve, then shared it out between two bowls. “That’s the thing. Daisy did want Buck to buy her something. The sextant.”

“The sextant?” Gina asked, as she dumped the tomato sauce on top of the pasta, inelegantly. “As in the naval instrument? What would a woman like Daisy want a sextant for?”

“Right? That’s exactly what I thought!” Lacey sprinkled parmesan shavings on top of her pasta mound.

“Maybe she just picked it at random,” Gina mused, handing Lacey one of the two forks she’d retrieved from the cutlery drawer.

“She was very specific about it,” Lacey continued. She carried her food and wine toward the table. “She wanted to buy it and of course I told her she’d have to come to the auction. I thought she’d drop it, but nope. She said she’d be there. So now I have to put up with the two of them again tomorrow. If only I’d put the damn thing away rather than leaving it out in plain view of the window over lunch!”

She looked up as Gina took her seat opposite, to see that her neighbor was looking quite flustered all of a sudden. She didn’t seem to have anything to add to what Lacey had said, either, which was extremely uncharacteristic for the usually chatty woman.

“What is it?” Lacey asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I was the one who convinced you that closing up shop for lunch wouldn’t hurt,” Gina mumbled. “But it did. Because it gave Daisy the chance to see the sextant! It’s my fault.”

Lacey laughed. “Don’t be silly. Come on, let’s eat before this goes cold and all our effort goes to waste.”

“Wait. We need one more thing.” Gina went over to her herb pots lined up on the window ledge and picked some leaves off one. “Fresh basil!” She placed a sprig on each of their bowls of badly presented, gloopy pasta. “Et voila!”

For all its cheap cheerfulness, it was actually a very tasty meal. But then again, most convenience foods are filled with fat and sugar, so it would have to be!

“Am I a decent enough substitute for Tom?” Gina asked as they ate and drank wine.

“Tom who?” Lacey joked. “Oh, you just reminded me! Tom sort of challenged me to cook him a meal from scratch. Something native to New York. So I’m doing a cheesecake for dessert. My mom sent me a Marth Stewart recipe. Want to help me make it?”

“Martha Stewart,” Gina said, shaking her head. “I have a much better recipe.”

She went over to the cupboard and began rummaging around. Then she pulled out a battered cookbook.

“This was my mother’s pride and joy,” she said, putting it on the table in front of Lacey. “She collected recipes for years. I have clippings in here going all the way back to the war.”

“Amazing,” Lacey exclaimed. “But how come you never learned to cook, if you had an expert at home?”

“Because,” Gina said, “I was far too busy helping my dad grow veggies in the garden. I was a proper tomboy. A daddy’s girl. One of those girls that liked to get my hands dirty.”

“Well, baking can certainly do that,” Lacey said. “You should’ve seen Tom earlier. He was covered head to toe in flour.”

Gina laughed. “I meant I liked to get muddy! To play with bugs. Climb trees. Fish. Cooking always seemed too feminine for my tastes.”

“Better not tell Tom that,” Lacey chuckled. She looked down at the recipe book. “So do you want to help me make the cheesecake, or aren’t there enough worms to keep you interested?”

“I’ll help,” Gina said. “We can use fresh eggs. Daphne and Delilah both laid this morning.”

They cleaned up their dinner and got to work on the cheesecake, following Gina’s Mom’s recipe rather than Martha’s.

“So, other than the Americans, are you excited about the auction tomorrow?” Gina asked as she crushed up biscuits in a bowl with a potato masher.

“Excited. Nervous.” Lacey swilled the wine in her glass. “Mostly nervous. Knowing me, I won’t sleep a wink tonight worrying about it all.”