Free Prime Cut by Diane Mott Davidson

talk about Aspen Meadow's history the way some people can croon show tunes. The times I'd had to take Arch with me to the museum, Cameron had kept my son spellbound with stories of local outlaws, ghosts, Indians, and untold, priceless treasure buried in Aspen Meadow. Arch had been rapt. I hadn't been immune either.
     
     
I laid the fruit in a buttered pan and thought back to the photos on the Burrs' guest house walls: Cameron I and Barbara with shovels and maps. In the thirties, Cameron had told Arch, Aspen Meadow and Blue Spruce had been aswarm with treasure hunters. A persistent Depression-era rumor held that a stagecoach robber had buried a coffee can chockful of gold pieces in a mine shaft in Aspen Meadow or Blue Spruce. Forget that there was no mining in Aspen Meadow or Blue Spruce; Arch had subsequently insisted we follow a trail that - legend had it - led to the gold at the top of Smythe Peak. We'd dug for hours, to no avail, and our only company had been Steller's jays squawking at us for invading their domain.
     
     
I beat butter with sugar for the cobbler topping, and I recalled Arch's wide-eyed plea that we visit a local ranch where longhorn steer were raised. There, contrary to recorded history but according to Cameron Burr, Jesse James and his gang had buried fifty thousand dollars at the foot of a lodgepole pine. The trick was finding the right tree. Jesse James himself had supposedly pointed a knife downward to the treasure, and embedded the weapon in the pine tree's trunk. If he had, both the knife and the fifty thousand were still there, because Arch hadn't found them.
     
     
I measured flour with baking powder, remembering I the time Cameron and Barbara had accompanied us on one of the many treasure hunts Cameron had sparked in my too-imaginative son. The Burrs, Arch, and I had crawled through the crumbling Swiss-built inn west of Aspen Meadow where the Bund - Nazis and their sympathizers, posing as bicycling tourists, the story went - had allegedly met during the Second World War. The inn, empty for years and recently renovated as apartments, had given us permission to search the place while the construction crew worked on new plumbing. Alas, to Arch's intense disappointment, we'd uncovered no stash of deutsche marken below swastikas carved - by squatters? Or by frustrated treasure seekers? - on closet floors.
     
     
Now, at fourteen, Arch didn't drag me out on treasure hunts anymore. Instead, he listened to pounding rock music, worried intensely about his appearance, and I yearned for Julian to move back. And though he would never admit it, the only thing Arch truly wanted was a girlfriend.
     
     
I stirred egg into the cobbler dough and dropped spoonfuls of the thick, golden batter on top of the glistening cherries. No treasure, no girlfriend, and the Burrs in deep trouble. Gerald Eliot dead. And I needed catering business. I slid the cobbler into the oven and contemplated my booking calendar.
     
     
This was Tuesday, August nineteenth. Unfortunately, my slimy catering competitor, Craig Litchfield, had so severely cut into my bookings that I had no work until a week from today. And even more unfortunately, that work was unpaid. Tuesday, the twenty-sixth of August, was the date of the rescheduled tasting party at the Homestead. This time, the catering competition for the Merciful Migrations September Soiree would be silent. I would be up against Andre and Craig Litchfield. The Soiree committee included my frequent catering clients Edna Hardcastle and Weezie Harrington, as well as Marla. How had the committee arrived at the decision that they even needed to put the event out for bids? I had no idea.
     
     
I loved Andre. I would enjoy working by his side even if he won the competition. Still, I was sure Craig Litchfield had somehow forced the issue of a contest. What I couldn't imagine - and what was troubling me - was the means he would employ to try to win it.
     
     
I made another espresso,