Occasionally, the deceased attempt to communicate not merely by nodding and gestures but through the art of mime, which can be frustrating. Like any mentally healthy citizen, I am overcome by the urge to strangle a mime when I happen upon one in full performance, but a mime who’s already dead is unmoved by that threat.
Turning in a full circle, in seeming solitude, I nevertheless said, “Hello?”
The lone voice that answered was a cricket that had escaped the predatory frogs.
Three
THE KITCHEN IN THE MAIN HOUSE WAS NOT SO ENORMOUS that you could play tennis there, but either of the two center islands was large enough for a game of Ping-Pong.
Some countertops were black granite, others stainless steel. Mahogany cabinets. White tile floor.
Not a single corner was brightened by teddy-bear cookie jars or ceramic fruit, or colorful tea towels.
The warm air was redolent of breakfast croissants and our daily bread, while the face and form of Chef Shilshom suggested that all of his trespasses involved food. In clean white sneakers, his small feet were those of a ballerina grafted onto the massive legs of a sumo wrestler. From the monumental foundation of his torso, a flight of double chins led up to a merry face with a mouth like a bow, a nose like a bell, and eyes as blue as Santa’s.
As I sat on a stool at one of the islands, the chef double dead-bolted the door by which he had admitted me. During the day, doors were unlocked, but from dusk until dawn, Wolflaw and his staff lived behind locks, as he had insisted Annamaria and I should.
With evident pride, Chef Shilshom put before me a small plate holding the first plump croissant out of the oven. The aromas of buttery pastry and warm marzipan rose like an offering to the god of culinary excess.
Savoring the smell, indulging in a bit of delayed gratification, I said, “I’m just a grill-and-griddle jockey. I’m in awe of this.”
“I’ve tasted your pancakes, your hash browns. You could bake as well as you fry.”
“Not me, sir. If a spatula isn’t essential to the task, then it’s not a dish within the range of my talent.”
In spite of his size, Chef Shilshom moved with the grace of a dancer, his hands as nimble as those of a surgeon. In that regard, he reminded me of my four-hundred-pound friend and mentor, the mystery writer Ozzie Boone, who lived a few hundred miles from this place, in my hometown, Pico Mundo.
Otherwise, the rotund chef had little in common with Ozzie. The singular Mr. Boone was loquacious, informed on most subjects, and interested in everything. To writing fiction, to eating, and to every conversation, Ozzie brought as much energy as David Beckham brought to soccer, although he didn’t sweat as much as Beckham.
Chef Shilshom, on the other hand, seemed to have a passion only for baking and cooking. When at work, he maintained his side of our dialogue in a state of such distraction—real or feigned—that often his replies didn’t seem related to my comments and questions.
I came to the kitchen with the hope that he would spit out a pearl of information, a valuable clue to the truth of Roseland, without even realizing that I had pried open his shell.
First, I ate half of the delicious croissant, but only half. By this restraint, I proved to myself that in spite of the pressures and the turmoils to which I am uniquely subjected, I remain reliably disciplined. Then I ate the other half.
With an uncommonly sharp knife, the chef was chopping dried apricots into morsels when at last I finished licking my lips and said, “The windows here aren’t barred like they are at the guest tower.”
“The main house has been remodeled.”
“So there once were bars here, too?”
“Maybe. Before my time.”
“When was the house remodeled?”
“Back when.”
“When back when?”
“Mmmmm.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Oh, ages.”
“You have quite a memory.”
“Mmmmm.”
That was as much as I was going to learn about the history of barred windows at Roseland. The chef concentrated on chopping the apricots as if he were disarming a bomb.
I said, “Mr. Wolflaw doesn’t keep horses, does he?”
Apricot obsessed, the chef said, “No horses.”
“The riding ring and the exercise yard are full of weeds.”
“Weeds,” the chef agreed.
“But, sir, the stables are immaculate.”
“Immaculate.”
“They’re almost as clean as a surgery.”
“Clean, very clean.”
“Yes, but who cleans the stables?”
“Someone.”
“Everything seems freshly painted and polished.”
“Polished.”
“But why—if there are no horses?”
“Why indeed?” the chef said.
“Maybe he intends to get some horses.”
“There you go.”
“Does he intend to get some horses?”
“Mmmmm.”
He scooped up the chopped apricots, put them in a mixing bowl.
From a bag, he poured pecan halves onto the cutting board.
I asked, “How long since there were last horses at Roseland?”
“Long, very long.”
“I guess perhaps the horse I sometimes see roaming the grounds must belong to a neighbor.”
“Perhaps,” he said as he began to halve the pecan halves.
I asked, “Sir, have you seen the horse?”
“Long, very long.”
“It’s a great black stallion over sixteen hands high.”
“Mmmmm.”
“There are a lot of books about horses in the library here.”
“Yes, the library.”
“I looked up this horse. I think it’s a Friesian.”
“There you go.”
His knife was so sharp that the pecan halves didn’t crumble at all when he split them.
I said, “Sir, did you notice a strange light outside a short while ago?”
“Notice?”
“Up at the mausoleum.”
“Mmmmm.”
“A golden light.”
“Mmmmm.”
I said, “Mmmmm?”
He said, “Mmmmm.”
To be fair, the light that I had seen might be visible only to someone with my sixth sense. My suspicion, however, was that Chef Shilshom was a lying pile of suet.
The chef hunched over the cutting board, peering so intently and closely at the pecans that he might have been Mr. Magoo trying to read the fine print on a pill bottle.
To test him, I said, “Is that a mouse by the refrigerator?”
“There you go.”
“No. Sorry. It’s a big old rat.”
“Mmmmm.”
If he wasn’t totally immersed in his work, he was a good actor.
Getting off the stool, I said, “Well, I don’t know why, but I think I’ll go set my hair on fire.”